Lucky Thirteen
by VivaLaVida1704
Summary: He's cautious.She's careless. He's rational. She's reckless. He doesn't believe in coincidence. She's scared to believe in fate. He plays by the rules. She ripped up the rule book and burnt it. He's Vick Benedict and she's Thirteen Harrison, and they absolutely one hundred percent should not be together except for the fact they're perfect for each other. Vick/OC
1. 9 Crimes

**Disclaimer: I'm sitting in my room with my back against a broken radiator and a cuddly hippogriff sitting on the floor next to me. I'm gonna go with that means I'm not Joss Stirling…. Ergo I don't own this book series. I do however own Thirteen. But that is all. **

**Chapter One **

**9 Crimes **

**Thirteen**

_(Staring down myself)_

There is nothing like cheap, gas station coffee first thing in the morning to remind you how much you hate your job. As I chuck a fistful of dollar bills down on the counter, I stare at the row upon row of cigarette packets behind the checkout girls head. I don't smoke, never have, never will – it kills you know – but I need something, anything, to look at. The brightly colored packets and big bold writing are just inoffensive enough for me not to care what they actually say, but just eye-catching enough to keep me from needing to look at anything else, to think about anything else – or anyone else.

"First coffee of the morning?" the girl asks me. She's painted a sweet, theoretically understanding expression on her face, but there's something more there, I can tell.

I try the same trick, forcing my mouth into an awkward grin. "How did you know?" I try for a laugh, but it gets stuck in my throat. I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans, trying to keep the nerves that are beginning to writhe in the pit of my stomach from appearing on my face. Something's not right about the look on her face, something's coming.

She shrugs. "You're a couple dollars short," she points at the crumpled stack of notes on the counter. Even as I let myself relax I curse my own paranoia for making me freak out over nothing. I have so much more to worry about that morning than being a little short for a cup of coffee. Still, best to get out as quickly as possible. I've spent too long here already.

I slap a few more notes down on the counter and take the coffee without saying another word. As soon as I'm out of the store, the cold hits me like a slap in the face. It's still Fall, but out here near the Rockies, it might as well be December. I wrap my hands around the warm Styrofoam coffee cup and take a small sip. It's pretty much tasteless, nothing more than muddy brown water, but it's warm and caffeinated, which is all I really need right now.

Absent mindedly I count the months since I had a decent cup of coffee. Four, five? No, six, if I remember correctly. Not since I started this latest job anyway.

Six months. Longer than it's ever taken me to finish a job. Far longer than it should've taken. Far, far longer than my employer paid for. I cross the gas station parking lot, searching my jacket pockets for the keys to the Chevy as I go.

The heater in the truck's broken. I forget until I'm inside the cab, with the engine running and no heat coming out at all. I roll my eyes and groan, letting my head fall back against the chair. I hate being cold, it makes me feel closed off, empty inside, like all the life is draining from my body with the heat. But there's nothing I can do about it, I don't have the money to get the heater fixed. Hell, I barely have the money to pay for a cup of crappy coffee.

That brings me back to earth. The question of money always does. The first thing you learn living by yourself is that without money there is no way you can possibly survive. Time to get back to work.

From under the seat I drag a battered road map and spread it across my knees. Brushing strands of red hair out of my face, I lean forward and flip to the pages that show Denver, Colorado.

Little red crosses are scattered across the map, marking all the places I've already been to. All the places the trail's gone cold. My employer is the kind of person that hires only the best. I'm the best there is, no question about it, and I'm failing. I don't even want to think about what'll happen to me if I don't find a way of finishing the job soon. All I know is that the nerves tangled up in the pit of my stomach won't leave until I do.

From the depths of my pocket I pull something else. A chunk of hair, about as blonde as it gets. It's all I need in theory. I close my eyes and breathe out slowly, count to three in my head then breathe in again, bracing myself for pain.

I am the ultimate tracker. I can find anybody, no matter where they are. I've always been able to do it, as long as I've known I'm a Savant, anyway. In a lot of ways it's a wonderful gift to have, a brilliant, brilliant power. But God does it hurt.

White hot agony explodes through my body, popping across every inch of skin, burning through my veins. If I wasn't so used to it, I'd scream. Instead I just swear through gritted teeth, trying as hard as I possibly can to stay calm, to concentrate despite the pain.

'_Focus Thirteen'_ I snarl to myself. I need to finish this now.

Inside my head, I see the twinkling lights of Denver City, I see the Rockies, already carpeted in snow, I see forest – then all I see is blackness.

Whoever this person is, and I can't tell from a bit of hair whether they're male, female – anything about them at all really – they're an extremely powerful Savant. No-one's ever been able to block me out like this before. I'm so very close I can feel it. A few seconds longer and I would've been able to pinpoint the exact location of the target, but now, nothing.

I'm suddenly overwhelmed with anger and irritation. I lash out at the steering wheel, my eyes itching with tears I am absolutely not going to let spill over. Failure and I aren't great friends – I'm not particularly used to it and it's not used to me – and to have such a lethal dose of it all at once is just more than I can handle.

Then I catch sight of something else, something that makes the anger, the irritation, the failure, fade into nothingness. I can't feel any of it any more, I'm frozen solid. More than that, I'm screwed.

**Vick**

_(Leave me out with the waste, this is not what I do) _

To give me some credit I know it's insanely ungrateful to be dissatisfied with a job thousands of people would kill to have. Especially if you're lucky – like it has to be said I am – to have a decent job at all.

Maybe it's to do with the totally dismal Monday morningness of it all. Mondays mean the start of the working week, and an obscenely early morning after a night of driving back to Denver after seeing the family. It's hard to do a job perfectly with your mind half frozen with sleep, and if I can't do a job perfectly, I don't want it done at all.

Or maybe it's just the sheer pointlessness of it all. Working in the FBI should be fulfilling, you should be able to leave work every day feeling like you've _done _something, like you've achieved something fantastic. I guess it must just be one of those things – when you're actually on a job, out there in the field, and you're winning and everything's going according to plan, there's no way you want to be anywhere else. When you're stuck in meetings all day, left feeling restless and ineffective, painfully and inescapably aware of all the hours you've wasted sitting and talking because nobody else is capable of seeing that you're getting absolutely nowhere – well, you start to lose faith in it all just a little bit.

I lean back in my chair and close my eyes, only half paying attention to the hum of voices around me. I know what they'll all be saying. The target we're currently trying to apprehend has proven more elusive than by all rights he should be. They're trying to decide what would be the best approach to tracking him down. I already know the answer. On top of that, I know the answer they're going to come up with. Suffice to say there is a less than direct correlation between the two.

One voice in particular catches my attention; it's one of the new guys, so new I couldn't even begin to guess at what his name is. He speaks tentatively, nervously, as if he's scared he'll get laughed out of the room the minute the words leave his mouth. Poor bastard doesn't realize that none of the people that matter are even listening anymore.

I was sent to this meeting by my direct superiors in the Bureau, there had to be someone at this meeting who was a field agent – not an information analyst or a lawyer, a real agent. Someone who actually knows what it's like to be doing this job for real. Everyone else is out on the streets, combing every inch of Denver for the man we're looking for.

To put it simply, I drew the short straw. No-one else wanted to be at this meeting, no-one else wanted to sit for three hours listening to a bunch of people come up with a brilliant plan to comprehend a serial killer whose name they've likely already forgotten. This meeting is a formality only, whatever is decided here will inevitably be useless. I try my hardest to stifle a yawn. However useless this particular job is, someone's got to do it, and do it well.

The new guy's still talking. Well good for him, sounds like he's either realized we're not listening so it doesn't matter how stupid he sounds, or he's tricked himself into believing we're all nice, easy-going, understanding guys who'll support the new kid on the block until he settles in. Which would be stupid, incredibly stupid. So stupid that if that's the case, maybe I won't have to learn his name after all.

"It's just, it is literally impossible how quickly this guy is moving – it's practically supernatural –"

Without even opening my eyes, I know that the new guys words have prompted every room in the head to turn towards me. I open my eyes lazily and take in the sea of expectant looks my role as 'resident expert on anything even remotely freaky' has earned me. Oh God, they're taking this seriously.

I glance down at my notes, pretending to be deeply engrossed in them, buying myself time. I try and think of a way, any way, that I can possibly explain to them that this guy is _not _a Savant.

A string of murders across the western U.S, the victims generally girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty five found in deserted buildings, their backs and stomachs slashed open. All eleven murdered girls left to bleed out. A slow, remorseless and excruciatingly painful death, the kind I wouldn't wish on my most hated enemy. Just the thought of it has me gritting my teeth against the profanities building up in my throat but that doesn't change a thing.

No matter what, I refuse to believe that there's a rogue Savant out there that the Savant Net doesn't know about – I just refuse.

Maybe if I wasn't the only person capable of independent thought in the room we'd have caught him by now and I wouldn't have to sit here answering questions about things they'll never ever understand. The anger that's been lying dormant in the pit of my stomach flickers back into life. And I know just then, that if I don't leave, I'll do something that I'll regret. Something that won't be worth it in the end no matter how good it'd feel at the time.

Someone coughs. "Agent Benedict?" I glance up at the sound of my name and shake my head. "The only thing I can suggest gentlemen is that we stop sitting around and catch the bastard."

"We have all the suspects under surveillance, Agent Benedict," someone says. "If they make a move, we'll know about it."

They attempt to tell me they're trying everything they can think of. They know they're lying and so do I. You don't have to be a Savant to know that. Truth is – they don't care. They can't catch the bastard so they've decided not to care. I lean back in my seat again and remind myself that I love my job.

**Thirteen **

_(A hymn called faith and misery)_

I run a red light just outside the gas station. I run another one not far from that, and skid past a stop sign at the edge of Denver city. The accelerator pedal gets closer and closer to the floor the further out of the city I get. I don't bother to glance in my mirrors - whatever I do I am not looking back.

Taking one hand off of the wheel I turn the volume up on the radio until the music's so loud Billy Joel Armstrong's screaming loudly enough to imprint Green Day's lyrics straight into brain - it's still not enough to drown out the cacophony of fear resounding through my head.

The letter is lying there on my passenger seat. I grabbed it off of the windshield as fast as I could but I still wasn't fast enough to see who left it. The envelope's silver, just like all the other envelopes. Those are littering the back seat of the Chevy. I ripped them into as many pieces as I possibly could, hoping that by destroying them, I'd be able to erase the memory - but this envelope is still intact and the nightmare that never really went away is rearing its ugly head again.

I've received five of these letters already, one for every month I've been late delivering information concerning the target's whereabouts. I don't know how he finds me. All I know is it's not the way I find people, otherwise he wouldn't need me at all.

Before I can stop myself, I sneak a glance at this latest letter. There are only three words on the glittering silver paper, but they're enough to send shivers running up and down my spine. My hands are shaking on the steering wheel - I'm clutching at it like a lifeline, as if somehow, if I hold on tight enough, I'll be ok. Except I won't be. I tear my eyes away from the letter and force myself to look at the road instead. It doesn't make much of a difference, the words are super-imposed on my eyeballs.

Goodbye

Unlucky Thirteen

I don't know much about my employer. But what I do know is enough. People don't live after he's decided he's had enough of them.

**So what did you think? Love it? Hate it? Review and tell me? Reviews are like cookies… except better…. Ok nothing's better than cookies but you get where I'm coming from.**


	2. Nobody laughs at God in a hospital

**Well hello everybody : ) First up, thank you so much for reading the first chapter of this story, and for all your lovely reviews – they're extremely appreciated : ) Just a warning… this is quite a long chapter, because I decided at the last minute that what was originally going to be the start of next chapter had to be in this chapter… otherwise next chapter wouldn't work as well… so apologies in advance, don't hate me for it if you never make it to the end ! : ) Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed Chapter one, it was just amazing to get so many in such a short space of time : ) I was not expecting that much positivity!**

**Disclaimer: If I was Joss Stirling… The Benedict's would have done the normal thing and started at A, instead of T when naming their children. There would also be far more references to the Sound of Music in the books. So I'm gonna go with that means I'm not Joss Stirling…. Which means I clearly don't own the books. Thirteen, however, is mine…. Obviously it's not exactly a common name, I will know if you steal her. **

**This chapter is for fearless0601, who put up with my nonsensical rambling about this story before I'd even published chapter one… and for Complete Chocoholic, whose incredibly review made like… my entire year… and to answer your sort of question, what Thirteen does for a living will be made clear in later chapters… for now you just get to sit and wonder : ) **

**Chapter Two**

**No one laughs at God in the hospital **

**Thirteen**

_(I hear the angels talking, talking, talking)_

Storm clouds are building up on the horizon, huge purplish bruises on the rapidly darkening sky. I'm many things, but I'm not an idiot. I'm on a little dirt track heading towards a town called Leadville, and just one look at the steep incline up ahead is enough to make me pull the truck over to the side of the road. There's no way the Chevy could make that climb in a storm.

As raindrops begin pelting the windshield, I turn the volume on the stereo up even higher. Possibly the only benefit of being alone in the middle of nowhere, is that there's nobody around to complain at the noise level.

Perhaps oddly, considering I am completely and totally untalented musically, the only thing that ever makes me feel anything resembling calm is being surrounded by a wall of music as loud as physically possible. The Scripts signature heartbreaking lyrics and thick Irish accents swirl around me and I can't help but crack the smallest of smiles.

What to do now? Run I suppose. I sigh and run a hand through my hair, trying and failing to keep the long red waves out of my face. These days it feels like I'm always running.

I don't bother making a plan – I won't stick to one so it's generally pointless. My plans consist of picking a spot on a road map a long way away from wherever I am at the time and hoping I'll have enough gas to make it that far.

A cell phone goes off from the back of the truck. I twist in the drivers seat, forehead crinkling in a frown. Did I leave a jacket back there? A bag? Why would my cell phone be at the back of the truck?

Wait. My cellphone died in Arizona – I remember it happening. There's no way I've been able to charge it since. Horror begins to creep through my body, starting at my heart and working its way down, turning me to stone.

Shaking so much I almost can't move, I reach towards the Chevy's back window and wipe away the condensation fogging up the glass. Not wanting to believe my eyes I stare into the back of the pickup truck. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears, counting down the number of seconds I have left.

Without even thinking about it, without even realizing I'm moving, I kick open the door, leap out into the storm.

I run. Within seconds he catches me. Tackles me to the ground. I'm tall for a girl, but he's taller and his bulk makes me look like a stick figure.

The truck stereo's still on, singing along with the howling wind and pounding rain of the storm.

_I hear the angels talking, talking, talking,_

_Now I'm a dead man walking, walking, walking. _

**Victor**

_(The baffled king composing Hallelujah)_

The storm hurls itself against the office windows, tearing at the glass, as if it's desperate to find a way inside. I ignore it and turn over a page of the case report I'm reading. For the first time in my life, I'm glad I'm not out in the field today. This storm's set to last hours, it's only been raging for twenty minutes and the whole city's already soaked.

We still haven't caught the serial killer. Even after my outburst at the meeting prompted the senior agents to give control of the case to my team, even after my team leader decided to implement my plan of action for finding him – we still haven't got a clue where he is.

"For all we know he's not even still in the state," I growl to myself. Special Agent Cass Funnell, perched behind his desk on the other side of our shared office looks up from his own work and raises his eyebrows at me.

"Sorry, what did you say?"

I shake my head at him. "Just talking to myself."

_First sign of madness you know big bro. _

Even though I've been communicating with my family like this for years, I almost jump at the sound of Zed's voice in my head.

_Zed, what the hell are you doing?_

I can practically see him smirking. _Talking to you of course._

My little brother, the joker. He's just as bad as Xav, except harder to tolerate. At least Xavier isn't actively _trying_ to be a jerk.

_Can it wait? I'm working. _

_You're always working Vick. _

I'm about to respond with a low comment about the amazing things that would happen if Zed tried working for a change instead of messing around with his motorbike and chasing after his precious blonde girlfriend when I hear a note of – doubt? Or is it worry? – creep into my brothers voice. It's all I need to snap to attention. He's a git, but he's family. And family always comes first.

_I saw something Vick… it's to do with the case you're working on _

My heartbeat starts racing slightly, I cast a quick look at Cass to see if he's watching me, then cover my eyes with my hands, forcing myself to concentrate.

_Zed what did you see? Do you know who he is… the killer? _

_No. _

Despite myself I feel my heart sink towards my stomach.

_But I did see a place. A place he's going to be… or maybe he's already there, you know I can't be sure. If you're quick, you might catch him. _

I leap to my feet and rip open a desk drawer. Cass looks up, alarm written all across his face. "Victor what the hell's going on?"

I pull a gun from the drawer, and stuff it into the holster at my belt. "Cass we've gotta get going."

**Victor**

_(Emily will find a better place to fall asleep)_

The road to Leadville is about as remote as it's possible to be and still be relatively close to a city as large as Denver. More than that it's almost completely deserted apart from the red Chevrolet truck parked haphazardly by the verge. A torrent of obnoxiously loud rock music streams from the stereo. For the briefest of seconds I see doubt creep into Cass's eyes.

He believed me the moment I told him we had to leave the office. He even helped me persuade the rest of the team. He wasn't expecting me to drag him halfway to Leadville in the middle of the storm for a piece of shit Chevy truck.

That's when I see it. Or to be more precise, Kelly Garcia, the junior agent sees it. But I'm the first one to the car, gun in front of me, wind sending my regulation black windbreaker flapping out behind me like a superhero cape.

Blood. The smell, sickly and almost metallic hits my nostrils. It trickles down the side of the door, spilling out into the road. It's almost the exact same shade as the truck, which would account for why we didn't see it at once. Even though I know it's despicable of me I can't help but feel a faint rush of relief at the knowledge that I haven't dragged the whole team out to the middle of nowhere for nothing.

Behind me Cass raises his gun as well, on the other side of the truck I see Kelly and Callum, the team leader, doing the same. "FBI!," Cass shouts. "Put your hands where we can see them!"

But as I edge closer to the drivers door of the truck, I see something that makes me reach my hand out to hush him. It's not our killer in this truck. It's something much, much worse.

With my free hand I rip open the truck door and stare down at the girl lying spread eagled across the front of the truck. Dark hair that's almost the same color as the blood soaking her chest covers her face, her hands are spread over the front of her shirt. By the looks of it she was trying to put pressure on the wounds to stop the bleeding. Clever girl. It might have worked if her stomach hadn't been slashed open.

"She was dragged." Kelly's voice is soft, but the wind carries it over to me. She points to the track in front of the truck. There's a blood trail leading from the truck to a scuffed up area on the road. Callum nods. "Looks like she tried to make a run for it but the killer caught her, dragged her back to the truck."

"He probably thought it would take longer for us to find her if she was holed up inside her truck instead of just lying by the road," Cass chips in.

I ignore all of them. I stare down at the girl, revulsion at the kind of animal that would do this rising up in my throat. That's when I see it, the faintest tremor of her body, a tiny movement as, almost imperceptibly, her chest rises and falls.

"She's still breathing," I almost whisper. Only Cass hears me, his eyes widening as he too catches sight of the breath coming in and out of the girls body. A grin begins to spread across his face. "She's still breathing!" he shouts over to the other two. "She's still alive!"

I don't pretend to myself for even one second that they're merely happy for the girl, for the chance that what was done to her can be undone – that she might live when all the other girls before her have died.

They're happy for another reason. I'll admit it's a good reason, but just admitting that makes me as selfish as the rest of them. They're happy because if she lives, she's a witness, she knows what the killer looks like. She can help us catch him.

Callum shouts for one of us to call an ambulance and as Cass dials, I reach over and slide one hand under the other girls knees. Checking the safety's on, I place my gun on the roof of the truck, freeing my other hand to slip it under her shoulders.

Suddenly a sharp pain shudders through my body. It's like being torn in two, like I'm being ripped apart by some invisible weapon. The pain lasts only a second but in its place I'm left with a stifling sense of panic, of claustrophobia. Without being able to even begin explaining why, I have to get the girl out of there.

Ignoring Kelly's shouts that I should leave her where she is, that moving her could make the bleeding worse, I scoop her into my arms and pull her out of the truck.

It's like a nightmare in there. If she's going to live, she'll never get over it anyway. If she dies, I want her to know I tried to save her. And even if I don't understand why, there is no way I'm leaving her there.

**Thirteen**

_(no-one laughs at God in a hospital)_

I feel like I'm drowning in my own thoughts. Thousands of words, faces, names, memories are all twirling around inside my skull but I can't even begin to make any sense of them.

The only thing that remains is the pain. Slow, constant, throbbing – like my entire chest is on fire. Even though I'm drifting in and out of consciousness faster than I can blink, the pain never goes away.

Neither does the man. Every time I open my eyes he's sitting there. I get the sense he's trying very hard not to stare at me, though I don't know why. What is there to stare at anyway?

I want to ask him if I'm dead. I thought I'd know you see. I thought that dying is one of those things that you can't possibly understand until it happens to you, after which it's obvious. But it isn't obvious, not to me anyway.

I get the feeling I might be dead, but I don't know. I just don't know. And every time I try to ask him, every time I'm awake enough to open my mouth and start the question, I blink and he's gone. And I'm left tumbling down into nothingness again, the question dead before it's even been asked.

**Victor **

_(Sick inside without a sense of feeling)_

She drifts in and out of consciousness. The doctors say it's a fever, the wounds have been infected and now her whole body's on fire with a sickness she might not be strong enough to fight.

I ask if this would have happened if I hadn't moved her. The look one doctor gives me tells me I don't want to know the answer.

"She's on antibiotics now," he says. "We can't know anything for sure until then."

The only time she stays awake is for more than a few minutes, Callum's in the room. Her eyes shudder open as he slams the door behind him and she opens her mouth. But before she can say whatever it is she wanted to, she starts to vomit, and I'm forced to grab a plastic bowl and hold it under her chin.

Callum grins ruefully at me. "I see you've got the whole caretaker thing down already."

I grimace and nod. "Sometimes sir, and only occasionally – it comes in handy to be the third eldest of seven. My mom used to make us help whenever someone got sick."

He nods. "Then you are indeed the perfect man for the job then,"

I frown, confused. "What… job sir?"

He draws a deep breath and clenches his jaw. I know instantly that whatever he's about to say, I'm not going to like one bit.

"We don't know why she's still alive, Vick," he begins slowly, carefully, as if he's speaking to a child in elementary school. "We don't know if it was an accident or if the killer was frightened off before finishing the job. Either way, the profile we have of him – a profile you helped to create I might add – tells us he'll more than likely try and finish the job. One of us has to be here in case that happens."

I stand up. "Yes sir, I understand that, but why me? Why not Cass, or Kelly – I'm the senior agent!"

"_I'm _the senior agent Benedict, you'll do well to remember that. _You_ may be more senior than agents Funnell and Garcia, but you still take your orders from _me_. I _ordered _you not to move the girl, but you did for some reason and _look what's happened._"

"Sir we don't know if me moving her has made this any worse -,"

"I'm still talking Benedict." He's angry now, angrier than I've ever seen him. Callum is an old friend of my fathers, he's called me by my last name all of five times for as long as I've known him.

"You caused her to bleed out, she's not strong enough to fight the infection by herself any more. If she dies, it's your fault. If she lives, this is how you make it up to her."

He turns on his heel and leaves, slamming the door behind him. I shudder and sink back into my seat. Annoyance sparks across my body. I can't explain why I did what I did, but it was what I thought was best.

"I was trying to help you," I whisper to the girl in the hospital bed.

Unsurprisingly, she doesn't say a word.

**Remember how I said reviews were like cookies? Well… I take it back.. reviews are EVEN better than cookies… reviews are magical : ) So tell me how you felt about this chapter.. go on.. you know you want to : ) **


	3. It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

**Hello everyone.. wow… two chapters in one day… aren't you all spoiled : ) Quick warning… this chapter is quite odd and a wee bit gruesome and not very nice at all really.. but it is quite necessary in terms of the whole story so I promise I'm not making it deliberately nasty just to freak people out : ) **

**Disclaimer: If I owned Finding Sky, the entire series would be told from the point of view of Mr. Joe. So I'm gonna go with I don't own it : ) Thirteen on the other hand, belongs to me. **

**As always thank you to everyone who reviewed/favorited/followed .. it just means so much to me every time I see the number of people who think this lil old story is worth paying attention to! Special shoutout this time goes to aniram112 who was the thirteenth reviewer. Yeah… my messed up mind had fun with that! Hopefully you find that as exciting as I did… no? In that case…. This is dragging on and you (hopefully) actually want to read Chapter three….**

**Chapter Three **

**It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah**

**Victor **

_(So now she's back in the atmosphere)_

I'm half asleep when she wakes up. She blinks once, twice, three times. For a second I think she's just going to fall back asleep again, but instead she shakes her head slightly, like she's trying to shake herself free of wherever it is she went inside her head whilst the rest of us sat here wondering if she'd ever come back.

The nurses did the best job they could with her, cleaning up her face and her arms, but they haven't quite gotten around to finishing the job. There's still dried blood in her hair and under her fingernails. Her skin is so pale it's almost translucent. She still looks like she's living in a nightmare.

She makes a noise. At first I think she's just clearing her throat, before realizing her mouth is moving, trying to form words. As she tries to sit up a little, I shuffle the hard plastic chair I've occupied for the past five hours closer to her bed and lean forward slightly.

"Say again," I murmur, trying to be as non-threatening as possible. I figure if I'm stuck babysitting, I'm gonna be the best goddamned babysitter there ever was.

"Who are you?" she drawls, and even though she's barely capable of speaking above a whisper it _is _a drawl. She's clearly from further south than Denver, I make a mental note to add 'where are you from' to the list of interrogation questions I'm building up inside my head for when she's better.

I clear my throat, whipping my identification card from the pocket of my windbreaker. "Special agent Victor Benedict, FBI, I've been assigned to you for a protection detail to -,"

But to my astonishment she's stopped listening, instead rolling her eyes to the ceiling and throwing herself back down onto the bed.

"I asked who you were, you know like… _your name_, not your entire life story," she growls, clearly catching sight of my incredulous expression. I raise my eyebrows, in the space of a few minutes she's suddenly become far more intimidating than anyone in a hospital bed has a right to be.

I take a deep breath, count to ten, breathe out again. Then I repeat the entire procedure. Breathe in, count to ten, breathe out again. I've dealt with obnoxious victims before. Generally the stress of whatever it is they've been through gets to them, making them pricklier, more likely to lash out than they would be usually.

The trick is to act like I'm talking to Xav, or Zed or to a lesser extent Yves. Act like you're talking to an abrasive teenager and you won't take any of it personally. Teenagers don't mean half the things they say, and the things they do mean they'll try and take back later anyway.

"O-Kay," I say slowly. "I'm Victor. Victor Benedict. How about you?"

She watches me warily. Her eyes flicker to my face, then over my shoulder to the door which is ever so slightly ajar so I can see into the corridor, then back to my face again. Not once does she meet my eyes.

"Thirteen," she says at last. "My name's Thirteen. I'd say it was a pleasure to meet you but I'm pretty sure it's against the law to lie to a federal officer."

The problem with talking to Thirteen like she's a teenager, is that I'm pretty sure she does mean what she's saying. And even if she doesn't mean it, she wants me to think she does.

I squeeze my eyes tight shut, trying to keep back the irritation building up in the recesses of my over-tired brain. Even exhausted and thoroughly pissed off I will not forgive myself for shouting at a sick girl.

Instead I just mutter to myself so quietly I'm convinced she won't be able to hear me. "I think I liked you better when you were unconscious."

**Thirteen **

_(Hope is just a stranger wondering how it got so bad)_

He's still there when I wake up. The man – Victor. He sits sentinel-like by my bedside, though I think if it came down to it he'd rather get in the line of people who want to hurt me instead of being the lucky one who gets to beat all the others back.

He's too close. Much, much too close. I try to edge away from him, but even the slightest movement makes the pain in my chest – deadened a little by the drugs seeping into my veins – leap back into life again.

I must have cried out because Victor snaps back into attention. "What's wrong? Do you need a doctor?" His eyes practically glow with concern. Of course he's concerned. I wonder how much shit he'll be in if I kick the bucket while he's on guard duty.

He's even closer now, too close, _much too close. _I can't breathe, I open my mouth and gasp but it feels like nothing's happening. I panic, I need him to move, to give me space again. "I'm fine," I manage to snap. "Just, just _move_ will you."

He shoots me a weird look, confused, maybe a little hurt. Good. That'll teach him to stay away from me. I've never been good with strangers, being around people I don't know unnerves me. Victor unnerves me more than most people.

He's tall, _really _tall, I realize now he's stood up. Dark eyes, tanned skin. Black hair he's pulled back into a ponytail with a rubber band. He's attractive I note grudgingly. I wonder if he knows he'd be gorgeous if it weren't for the ridiculous ponytail.

But it's the look in his eyes that scares me. Or rather – the lack of one. Whatever expression crosses his face, it never reaches his eyes. They remain perfectly inscrutable, like he can see something that I can't.

I begin tapping my fingers against the metal frame of the bed. My fingers are about the only thing I can move, and the motion helps me concentrate. My thoughts are still thick and slow. Everything feels like a huge mess in my head. I know why I'm here I just – don't quite seem to remember. The memories are faster than me, they slip away before I can get a good look at him. But I know it's there in my head, the one memory that I need. I know what happened, I do, _I do_, I –

It's like running into a brick wall. The memory hits me so hard I physically flinch away from it. _Somebody tried to kill me._

_There's a storm brewing. An empty road. A cell phone rings. Then I'm running. He's bigger than me, stronger than me too. He's pinning me to the ground. He found me again, how does he always find me? _

He always finds me. My eyes jump straight to the door, someone's left it open. I'm in a hospital full of people. How easy would it be to find me here? To slip into my room when no-one was looking. They wouldn't know who he was, only I'd know and by then it'd be too late.

The window's open as well, why the hell have they left the window open? I realize I'm still tapping on the bedframe, but I don't need the movement any more to help me focus. In fact, I wish I could go back to the way things were before.

_What if he finds me? What if he finds me? _

The thought chases itself around my brain, it's all I can think of. Everything that passed through my brain was full of it, the thought echoes through my head, through my entire body.

Thunder rumbles menacingly overhead. Victor looks absently out of the window. "There's another storm coming," he says. His tone is kept strictly conversational but I don't believe it for a second. There's no way he's missed the panic that must be written on my face, there's no way he can't see exactly how terrified I am right now. I don't think there's anything those eyes don't see.

I can hear rain begin to drum down on the roof.

_A storm, running, too slow, he's caught me _

"Shut the window," I say, and I can hear the tremor in my voice as plain as day. Victor shoots me one of those looks again, but says nothing and crosses over to the window.

"Does it lock?" I ask him as he pulls it shut. He nods. "Lock it." I watch him carefully while he slides the catch back on the window. I can't explain why, but I don't trust him to do it. I don't think he takes me seriously enough to actually do it.

"And the door," say, nodding to it. "Can you shut the door." This time, however, Victor shakes his head.

"I can't shut the door Thirteen," he says stiffly. "I need to be able to see whose coming up and down the hall."

I feel panic bubble up inside my chest. "Please," I whisper. "_Please."_ On any normal day I would be ashamed at how desperate my voice sounds, how feeble, how pathetic. But I need him to listen. I need him to understand.

"Thirteen you're safer if I can do my job." If he hadn't seen the panic in my eyes before, he definitely has now. But it's not changing anything. He just thinks I'm being stupid, pathetic, _he doesn't understand. _

The thunder's even louder now. It almost sounds like laughter – like the storm's taunting me.

_Laughter. He's enjoying this. Lighting sets the whole sky on fire and I catch a glimpse of something silver in his hand. The first cut is across my rib cage, the second lies just below it. The third cut is across the top of my stomach. _

I need to see them. Without knowing why, just knowing that it's important, I know that I have to see them, the cuts. Feverishly I start undoing the buttons of the flimsy green hospital gown they've put me in. I don't care that Victor's there, I don't care if he sees.

The bandages underneath are crisp and white. I can't find the point where their tied together so I start scratching at them feverishly. I can't stop myself, I have to see them, _I have to. _

"What the hell are you doing?" Victor shouts. In two strides he's crossed the room from his place by the window and is by the bed.

"Stop, Thirteen stop," he makes a grab for my hands. I'm crying, I can't believe it, but I'm actually crying. I take no notice of the tears spilling down my face and neither does Victor.

I know that if the circumstances were different he could stop me without even trying. As it is, he's trying to wrestle my hands away from the bandages without hurting me, which is nice of him, chivalrous almost.

I feel less concerned about hurting him. I fight back as best I can. Every movement sends shivers of pain up and down my chest but I have to get him off. _I have to make him understand_.

Victor grits his teeth and for the briefest of seconds I see an actual emotion flash through his eyes. Worry? Anger? No… it's regret. But _what does he regret? _

Then I feel it. A chill passes through my body. My hands drop to my sides.

_Enough. You will hurt yourself. That is enough. _

Victors voice echoes through my brain. For a second I think I'm imagining it. But I didn't mean to stop what I was doing. _I _didn't make my hands fall away from the bandages. He did. Because Victor Benedict, I realize, Is a Savant.

_Savant. He's a Savant. I realize it too late, far too late. It should have been obvious. He found me after all. The knife catches the light again and I close my eyes. _

I look up into Victors inscrutable black eyes. Really look at them for the first time. But I don't see him, not really. I'm looking at another strangers eyes. A stranger who wanted to kill me. I look away, I can't meet his eyes anymore.

**Victor **

_(You and I'll be safe and sound)_

I don't know who's shaking more, me or Thirteen. I wrap one arm around her shoulders not even knowing what I'm doing anymore. "Hey," I whisper. "You're ok, nothing's gonna hurt you." She looks up at me, blue eyes meeting mine for the first time. "Don't lie," she whispers. "You know that's not true."

"I won't let anyone hurt you," I murmur. And it's true. I don't know what's wrong with this girl I've been tasked to give my life for and I really don't give a damn. And for once it's not because this is a job. It's because here is a girl who five minutes ago was talking and joking and being a general pain in the ass. She didn't look good but she looked better. Now she's shattered, broken into a million pieces.

I can't let that happen again.

**Err…yeah… you **_**were **_**warned in my defense. However the next chapter is actually quite nice.. cute almost… so don't give up on me quite yet kay : ) Remember… whilst reviews are not better than cake (aniram112.. you were so right on that one) they are still pretty good… at least if you're a slightly demented fanfiction writer who lives off reviews… which I am… : ) **


	4. Isn't it Ironic?

**Well hello everyone! After somehow deciding it was a smart idea to spoil you all with two chapters in a row yesterday (it wasn't, well hopefully for you it was, but not for me… writing is tiring stuff people, my fingers may never recover) I will admit to being a little lazy about getting this chapter out… but here it is! It is done! Quick heads up… whilst I am already in the process of writing chapter five (which I'm excited about btw, we find out much more about Thirteen AND there is a reasonably large leap forward with the Vick/Thirteen relationship, despite it only being the fifth chapter) … I'm going out tomorrow and will be away Saturday, so whilst I'll try to get it out by tomorrow evening, it may not be out until Saturday evening/Sunday morning! But chapter five is on the way I promise! **

**As always thank you to everyone who reviews/favorites/follows, it means absolutely loads and just motivates me to write more for you guys! **

**Disclaimer: I just spent far, FAR too much money buying about five different versions of the same song on Itunes… whilst it's most DEFINITELY worth it.. I'll pay for it. Joss Stirling on the other hand, would not have been such an idiot. Ergo, I am not her, Ergo, I don't own this series. Ergo…. Ok I just like saying ergo.. it makes me feel smart : ) Speaking of smart.. .Thirteen's smart… but she's mine… well she's Vick's.. but I created her so HAH! …. Yeah I'm really sleep deprived… bad things happen to my brain when that happens, sorry guys : )**

**Chapter Four**

**Isn't it Ironic?**

**Victor**

_(One foot on the narrow way, and one foot on the ledge)_

"I'm bored," Thirteen drawls. I glance over at her from my position by the door. She flickers in and out of moods so quickly at the moment, I can barely keep track of her. One second she's hunted, paranoid, the next she's arrogant, sarcastic. _A pain in the ass._

I take a deep breath. At times like this, when she's not a terrified little girl any more, it's so hard not to snap. "You're not making your life easy for yourself, Thirteen," I warn.

She raises her eyebrows at me, undaunted. I shake my head, silently wondering how she does that – slip right under my skin before I even know what's happening. Never in my life have I met a single person as easy to get angry at as Thirteen.

"Let's play twenty questions." Surprise flutters through my stomach. It doesn't sound like something Thirteen would suggest somehow, but one look at her face informs me that so long as appearances can be trusted, she's perfectly serious.

"Why?" I ask, suspicion sparked.

She smirks and settles herself more comfortably against the stack of pillows behind her back. "Because I like hearing other peoples most disgustingly dirty secrets, why else?"

An idea begins jumping up and down in my brain. When she's well enough, the plan is to interrogate Thirteen for any information she can give us that we don't already know. Anything I can discover now will only help the investigation proceed more quickly.

I feel a twinge of guilt in the pit of my stomach. Getting answers out of people is my specialty, using my gift on Thirteen would just make the whole thing so much easier. But it feels wrong somehow. Just looking at her, at those huge blue eyes that can't decide whether they want to look half dead or defiant, I get this sickening sensation in the pit of my stomach. All of a sudden I know, without knowing how I know it, that if Thirteen knew I was a Savant, if she knew what I can do, it would hurt her.

And all of a sudden I know something else too, something just as inexplicable.

I don't want Thirteen to hurt.

**Thirteen**

_(The shame that sent me off from the God I once loved)_

My mind is wild and out of my control. It slips out of my grasp every time I try to tame it, thoughts, memories, _everything_, spinning gleefully away from me. The nurses say that it's the effect of the antibiotics I'm on – their making me disoriented, confused. They say it'll pass soon enough. I've been like this for less than a week and already I can't imagine anything else. The memory of what a rational, orderly mind is like is almost impossible for me to recall.

But every once in a while, my thoughts settle down enough for me to at least recognize what the tangled mess of emotions knotted up inside my chest is, to recognize the fear, the uncertainty, the confusion, and the endless, endless boredom of waiting for whatever's going to happen to take place already.

I don't know where the idea of Twenty Questions comes from. I haven't played it since I was fifteen, since my mom was sick that last time. But instantly it feels like a good idea to me. What better way to alleviate boredom than to force Victor Benedict to talk to me? To reveal things he never would ordinarily?

Like the fact he's a Savant…No, I'm not going to mention that. That would involve revealing that I am too, and there's no way in hell I'm doing that. I don't know what to do with the information quite yet, but I know instinctively to keep it to myself until I do.

Now that I know what he is, I can feel his mind pressing up against mine. I don't enter it, something tells me I couldn't even if I wanted to, and my telepathy has never been as strong as my real talent. The temptation's always there though. I suppose that's just me really. I like to see how far I can get with life, people, anything, before shit starts to happen. The rush it gives me beats the crap out of the pain any day, as masochistic as it sounds.

So how far can I get with Victor Benedict?

For a second I think he's never going to say anything, that he'll just continue ignoring me the way he's done the past few days. Then slowly, what might just be a smile creeps across his face. "Ok," he says slowly. "I'll play – but I'm starting."

I shrug. He's not getting anything out of me that I don't want to tell him. I'm an expert at this game.

"Where're you from?" he asks.

"Not from around here?" I reply.

He snorts derisively, but I can hardly see what's so funny. "Yeah no kidding, the accent wasn't a give away at all."

Accent? Without meaning to I recall the last time someone commented on my accent. It was the last time I ever went back to South Carolina. They'd all tried to tell me I barely sounded Southern anymore. I try a smile, but just the thought of that particular memory turns into more of a grimace.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Victor laughs properly this time. "You kiddin' me? You sound like Rogue off of the X-men?"

"You watch the X-men?" Charlie used to love the cartoons. My hazy brain supplies me with memories of him sitting on the couch every Saturday morning with a bowl of cereal. He'd have sat there watching the show all day if we'd let him.

"Is that your question?" Victor retorts.

I shake my head. "Nope, answer it anyway though."

He brushes hair out of his eyes. "You didn't answer _my_ question," he says petulantly. For a grown man he's doing a remarkable impression of a three year old.

"Sure I did," I smile tauntingly. "Just not the way you wanted me too."

Victor rolls his dark brown eyes. "Fine – err no, I never watched the cartoons. I went to see a couple of the films. But my younger brothers went through this phase with the original series, they were obsessed."

"How many brothers do you have?" I can't help but ask, curiosity is too overwhelming for someone like me not to give into and I have a special spot in my heart for little brothers.

"Is that your question?"

"Yeah…sure," Victor's different when he talks about his family. Watching him closely, it's like a weight's been taken off him, like he's been watching what he says and suddenly feels he doesn't have to bother any more.

"I'm the third eldest of seven,"

"_Seven?"_

"Seven."

For a second I'm stunned. All I can think is _oh my God…seven children._

Then I realize my mouth's opening and reflexively I respond.

"How very Sound of Music of you."

He grins. Victor Benedict grins. I may die of shock. "Hmm, guess what, we even live on top of a mountain."

"The hills are alive…" I trill. At least I try to anyway. My voice is still weak and feeble, so my attempt to imitate Julie Andrews' epic opening number tails off into a fit of hacking coughs.

"It's too bad we're all guys, we could re-enact the entire musical, a couple of my brothers can actually sing," he muses.

"Are you saying I can't sing?" I gasp, feigning a look of mock horror.

"Oh no," Victor shakes his head, schooling his face in a reasonably good copy of a serious expression. "I would never say that."

And then suddenly it's too hard to keep a straight face. I collapse into hysterical laughter, barely even sure what I've found so funny. It feels like a foreign emotion, happiness. I greet it with open arms. _Nice of you to show up. _I glance up at Victor. The ghost of a smile is still lingering at the corners of his mouth, despite his efforts to disguise it as something else. _Who'd have thought happiness would turn up here. _

**Victor**

_(Driven to distraction, it's all part of the plan)_

I don't know where it comes from, the sudden rush of happiness that fizzes up inside me. Maybe it's just Thirteen's reaction at the admitted Von Trapp-ness of my family situation. Then again, plenty of people have acted the same way with my brothers and I before. So maybe it's just that she's laughing, finally.

I work out in my mind the number of days we've been in this hospital room. Five? No, six. I leave to change my clothes, to catch a few hours of sleep, but then I'm back here. Watching her. Not once have I seen her laugh. Either she's terrified, or sullen, never happy, never smiling. I can't even begin to predict her moods. It's like she doesn't trust the world with her emotions, anymore so she's keeping them locked up inside for only her to see. I think I know what that feels like.

But something tells me, though I have no way of knowing and even less right to make assumptions – that this is the real Thirteen. This girl who makes jokes that are actually funny, who laughs and looks impossibly, improbably alive.

She's beautiful when she laughs. Her smile lights up her whole face so much you'd never know there was anything wrong with her. _She's beautiful all the time. _

I don't know where the thought comes from but I push it back as quickly as possible. _You're on a job. _I remind myself. _Don't let anything distract from that. The job is what matters. _

"I have a little brother," Thirteen says suddenly. She seems almost surprised at her own words; I don't think she meant to say them out loud.

I need to end this conversation. If we just stop talking I'll be fine. But this can't continue, if it does, I'm bound to slip up and God knows what'll happen if I do.

"We don't have to talk about that," I manage to say, amazed I don't fumble the words and say something else. I can't do this, just sitting here, staring at her.

I don't know what's wrong with me, tongue-tied over a girl I don't even know. It makes absolutely no sense.

**Thirteen **

_(The good advice you just didn't take) _

I shouldn't even be surprised that Victor puts his foot in it. I should be more shocked that he was being entertaining in the first place. But a ridiculous, unnecessary, totally uncalled for twinge of hurt springs through me anyway. And I don't even know why I'm bothered.

I didn't really want to bring up Charlie. I don't talk about him to anyone – ever. He's my secret, my baby brother, and to be frank, I like it that way. As long as I'm the only one who knows about him, I can remember him anyway I like. He can remain the wide-eyed kid watching cartoons on the couch forever if that's what I want.

But it slipped out of me somehow. I blame it on the laughter. Happiness is a little like a drug. It goes straight to your head, and once it's inside you, you'll do anything to keep it.

But I can't help but know. It's the goddamned curiosity again. Or maybe it's just my addiction to knowing how far I can push people. I need to know why I suddenly hit a wall with Victor Benedict.

"Why do you do that?" I ask, trying not to let him hear how much I need to know the answer. "You were happy, you were – _smiling_, for the love of God. Why do you just – close off like that? It's -,"

Infuriating? Annoying? Obnoxious? Aggravating? Hurtful?

No. Not that last one.

"-Weird," I finish lamely.

Victor is expressionless again. The brief glint of laughter in his dark eyes completely extinguished. He clears his throat. "This is a job, for me Thirteen," he starts stiffly. "It's – it's important to me that I do it as well as I can."

I roll my eyes. "And what… you can't do your job if you're enjoying yourself?"

"I can do a better job if I'm – concentrating." He retorts, and for a second I think he's about to start getting properly angry. Not that that'll stop me.

As far I'm concerned, as far as life goes, there is no perfect and imperfect. Just good and bad and… something else in the middle. Trying to do everything right is impossible and pointless and just plain boring and if you're on roughly the right road what does it matter if you're perfect or not?

"You can't live your life trying to play by all the rules," I say slowly. I don't know where I get off lecturing him on how to live his life considering he's the one with a job in the fricking FBI, and I…. well never mind about how I make a living. I shake my head free of the thought. I'm not going to get hung up on that right now, I'm not.

"Well I don't know about that Thirteen, it's been working reasonably well for me all these years," Victor snaps back. "Being great at what I do is important to me, you don't have to understand it, but you can damn well shut the hell up about it if you don't."

I don't think he meant that to sound the way it did. It was meant to sound impressive, meant to put me in my place. Instead he sounds scared. Scared he's going to end up wrong. Scared life's gonna come for him if he doesn't do things exactly right.

"That's not true you know," I say softly. I don't even know why I say it, but I feel like, for some reason, it needs to be said.

"I mean – what's so scary about getting things wrong some of the time?" I continue. "Yeah – shit happens. It happens to all of us. Bad things happen to good people and really fricking amazing things happen to people who don't deserve any of what they've got. But you know… it's just life… it sucks but it's just life. What is there to be scared of?"" My mom said that to me just before she died. I don't even realize I'm repeating her words until they're out of my mouth and it's far too late to take them back.

Victor just stares back at me, completely unimpressed. He isn't to know what those words mean to me, or what it took to say them out loud.

I can't even begin to explain why I care so much. Maybe it's just the complete opposition of everything he's said to what I believe in. Maybe I've just been stuck in a room with this guy for far, far too long already.

I give up on him. This guy's obsessed with his job, he's not going to listen to a girl he doesn't know giving him a pep talk whilst pointedly not mentioning her own crappy life choices.

I let my eyes wander away from his face. A dull ache has begin bothering the back of my head, it crept in whilst I was talking, and I can tell it will be ages before it lives me alone. I realize absently that this is the longest I've stayed conscious in days.

It's like everything in my body spontaneously goes numb. I can't move, can't breathe. My eyes are stuck on something in the corridor, something that I know, in the rational part of my brain, means absolutely nothing.

But it's the non-rational, nonsensical part of my brain that's still in charge. One of the nurses moves an object slightly towards the light, making the metal suddenly shine silver.

_A glint of silver as the lightning illuminates the knife, an agonizing pause before the first slash across my rib cage. Blood everywhere, so much blood… _

"Shut the door," I turn to Victor, feeling a twinge of nausea at the return of the tremor to my voice. I thought I was ok. I thought I was over this… that it wouldn't happen again. I was _happy, _I was having _fun. _

Victor just stands there. "Victor please just shut the door!"

He's going to refuse, I know it, I can see it on his face. There's a look there, one I can't quite make out but I have a sickening feeling it might be disappointment. He has no right to be disappointed, he has _no right. _It hurts though, even though it shouldn't.

"Yeah," he says, he voice cold and distant. "Great pep talk Thirteen. Tell me, do you ever take your own advice, or is that just for losers like me?"

He kicks the door closed so hard the sound of it slamming shut rings in my ears. I bury my face in my pillow. I can't even begin to understand why it sounds to me like the whole world is falling apart.

**Is it just me… or did I manage to find the worlds MOST clueless people to write a story about? How does cluelessness make you feel? Tell me in a review… we shall have a deep and meaningful conversation about it… or you could do it to fuel my ego and skip the deep and meaningful bit if you'd rather. Either way… reviews make my little heart happy : ) **


	5. Stop and stare

**This chapter has taken far too long to write, longer than any of the other chapters and if I'm perfectly honest – I really don't like it any more. But I think I've kept you all waiting long enough, so hopefully it'll do : ) On a happier note, I'm already excited about next chapter which I will try to do for tomorrow, but may end up getting out later in the week. Just so you know, I'm going back to school soon, so I won't be able to update as much. Expect an update every Friday, almost definitely an update Saturday, and if you're lucky a Sunday one as well, I'm sorry there won't be as many as when I started, if I could, I would : ) **

**As always thank you to everyone who reviews, it means so much, I read every single one at least twice, just because your reviews are always so positive and so kind and I'm still having trouble believing that you like this lil' old fanfic so much : )**

**This chapter is dedicated to the three Guest reviewers who reviewed chapter four, whose reviews I almost forgot to approve and who I feel I should thank for being my first Guest reviewers : ) If you're reading you know who you are, so thank you : )**

**Disclaimer: I'm not actually sure anyone apart from possibly aniram1122 and I even read these any more so there's not much point making them funny. I don't own this series, Joss Stirling does. Thirteen is mine… I'll fight you for her, and I'm warning you, I'll probably win : ) I'm surprisingly vicious, ask my friends, they'll tell you : ) **

**Chapter Five **

**Stop and Stare **

**Thirteen**

_(I know they say you can't go home again)_

The house by the river is just as I remember it. White washed brick, blue shutters, a glass front door. I pull the Chevy into the driveway, throw it in park and clamber out onto the gravel. I look around and take a long breath in. After all these years it still smells the same out here, like dirt and wood smoke and thunderstorms. It still smells like home.

The front door crashes open and Charlie runs out, his face lit up with a grin that looks like it could cure cancer. He throws his arms around my neck; I bury my face in his mop of blonde curls. My beautiful baby brother.

In words no-one else will ever understand, he asks me how I've been, like always I'm more interested in him – how's school? How's soccer? Have you been looking after mom – and then suddenly there she is, my mom, laughing so hard I think she might collapse from pure happiness. She rushes us, hugging her arms around my waist so that Charlie is sandwiched in the middle.

A cold wind blows in from across the river. I shudder, goose bumps erupting along my skin. "Aren't you cold," I ask the other two through my giggles. My mom is wearing a little summer dress, Charlie's still in his blue X-men pajamas. He shrugs. "We're always cold Thirteen." My mom shoots me a concerned look.

"We're dead honey," she says brightly. "Or did you forget again?"

And suddenly the whole world turns to black and white in front of me. I realize I'm not outside the house any more, but in the middle of a graveyard on the side of a hill. And its not my mom and Charlie I'm holding, but a pile of bones.

_(Slow the clock that's ticking loud, I feel that time is running out)_

There was a time, up until a few months ago, when I had the dream every single night. It's always the same, right down to the minute details. It's as familiar to me as a favorite movie or book, I could probably recite it, line for line.

I don't open my eyes straight away. I just lie there, with them closed, telling myself that by the time I count to ten, I will have stopped thinking about the dream, I will have moved on.

**One**

'Take a deep breath in Thirteen,' I tell myself.

**Two **

'It was only a dream, it was only in your head.'

**Three **

'You know it didn't _really _happen like that, you were there for the real thing after all.

**Four **

'Your duffel bag's in the back of the truck, you know all you need is in there.'

**Five **

Still with my eyes closed, I fling my right arm out behind me, reaching wildly for where the bag should be.

**Six **

It's not there.

**Seven **

'It probably fell off the seat on the interstate, you were driving crappily, even for you.'

**Eight **

Seriously – where the hell did I put that bag? No way I was that tired when I packed the truck last night.

**Nine **

'Thirteen,' a voice in my head says, a voice that sounds creepily like my mom. 'You're not in your truck.'

**Ten **

'You're in hospital. You're bag isn't here.'

I sit bolt upright, eyes flying open. "Shit!" I yell, louder than necessarily, not loud enough to take me feel any better.

Victor Benedict taps a button on his phone.

"Thirty-five minutes, forty eight seconds," he announces drily to the room at large.

**Victor **

_(I told you to be patient, and I told you to be fine)_

"You were timing how long I was asleep?" Thirteen asks, incredulity spreading across her face. I shrug.

"You timed how long I was _asleep_?" she asks again, only this time she's not shocked she's pissed off. Big surprise there – not.

Since our game of twenty questions, only two major events have really occurred. Thirteen has decided I am a jerk. I have decided she's even more beautiful when she's pissed at me.

This is a problem. Because the more beautiful I decide Thirteen is, the harder it is for me to do my job properly, so she decides I'm even more of a jerk than she thought I was, so she gets even more pissed, which makes her even more beautiful.

In other words – we're both screwed.

It's getting harder and harder to keep reminding myself that I love my job.

**Thirteen**

_(I used to have heart but the highway took it)_

BI stare at Victor, feeling the anger bubble up inside me. What the hell is he playing at? Why is he such a jerk all the time? I open my mouth, about to demand an answer but he's saved from having to say anything by Bridget, the nurse changing my bandages.

"There's no need to get angry honey," she soothes. "It's just – you have a lot of trouble sleeping at the minute and we wanted to know how long it'd be before you woke up."

I roll my eyes at her. I like Bridget, she's sweet and caring, and she really, really doesn't want anyone to be unhappy. In matters concerning Victor Benedict, however, she's also an idiot. She can't see past Victor's huge brown eyes, charming smile and ridiculous ponytail. Basically, if it comes down to it, she'll always take his side.

"You know what Bridget? I think that's why _you_ would time me to see how long I slept for." I glare at Victor. "He just wants to screw with me."

"You were twitching in your sleep,' he says slowly, carefully, as if he's talking to a preschooler. "Having a nightmare." Just because Victor doesn't say it, doesn't mean he isn't thinking it.

_Tell me, do you ever take your own advice? _

His words from the other day ring in my ears and shame as complete and inescapable as it is irrational, floods through me.

This isn't my fault. I can't help the nightmares that follow me everywhere I go. It's not my fault that fear is like a parasite, clinging onto me, pulling me down, never letting go so I'm forced to drag it along with me. I can't fight it off, it's impossible. _Then again, it's not like you've tried particularly hard is it? _

No. I'm not going to do this to myself. There's only one thing I can think of that drives off this particular nightmare, and I don't have it with me.

"I need my duffel bag."

Victor raises his eyebrows, alarmed at the sudden change of conversation. "You what?"

I take a deep breath, for some reason I'm nervous, trembling at the thought of what he might say. Probably no, he'd say no just to mess with me, I'm sure he would. Still, it has to be worth a shot.

"I need my duffel bag, it was in the back of my truck when I -,"

"No." I was expecting Victor to refuse but not like that, not so quickly that I barely had a chance to get the words out.

Curiosity is a powerful thing. I think people often underestimate – or they forget – just how powerful it can be. It makes us say things, do things, that we've told ourselves we're not going to do, just for the sake of finding out an answer we probably don't want to hear anyway.

I should know better than to ask Victor Benedict to explain himself. I do it anyway.

"Why?"

"It's against the rules." Victor says shortly. "Your truck is evidence, which means the bag is too, and it's against the rules for me to remove it from storage without permission. That and -," he stops halfway through his sentence, forcing his mouth shut as if something was about to leak from it he didn't really want to say out loud.

Goddamned curiosity.

"And what?" I ask, fully aware of what a dangerous line I'm treading. Victor has his tense face on, his stressed face. The face I only see when he's about to lose his temper. I've never seen him truly furious, but the little bits of anger I've seen are more than enough to tell me I don't want to.

Not that that's going to stop me.

Victor shakes his head. "Nothing, it was absolutely nothing." His phone starts to ring from inside his jacket pocket and he's saved from having to say anything else by darting out of the room to take the call.

Bridget shakes her head at me. "You should be nicer to him," she says disapprovingly. "Everything he does, he does for you."

"And his job." I add. "Mostly his job really."

**Victor **

_(Hello, hello, anybody out there?)_

As I dash into the corridor, rummaging in my pocket for my mobile, I wonder when I started giving a damn about the rules.

I definitely never used to. I can recall thousands of moments from not _that_ long ago when I followed everything except the rules.

And this is an _insane_ rule – it's driving me crazy. Because I care about Thirteen. As inexplicable and totally ludicrous as it is _I do. _But there's a rule standing between me and what she wants. And I know, then, standing in a hospital corridor, that I am absolutely and totally heartless. Because I will not break the rules for Thirteen.

I won't risk everything for someone I don't even know. Even if I want to.

Eventually I manage to extricate my phone from my jacket. Holding it up to my face, I gasp – "Hello?"

To my intense surprise, it's my mother who answers. "Vick, honey, it's your mom."

"Well I guessed that," the only people who have this number are my family and a very select group of friends. And considering my family is eight ninths male, that doesn't leave me with much choice.

"But mom – why are you calling?" _Why aren't you using telepathy? _Everyone in my family has a cell phone, but we rarely use them, not to talk to each other anyway.

"I thought you'd be at work sweetie, I didn't want to interrupt anything," she says as if she doesn't know alarm bells are ringing all through my brain. "I'm _not_ interrupting am I?"

"No mom," I can't quite keep the bitterness out of my voice. "You're not interrupting _anything_." I take a deep breath, banishing all thoughts of Thirteen from my brain. She's not as important as family.

"What's up?" I am very careful this time, to keep my tone completely conversational.

"There's been another Savant in the area." My mom says it like it's nothing, but I can tell she's worried, which means I am too.

"What – who? What's happened?" I ask, different scenarios running through my head. "No-one's been hurt have they?"

"Everyone's fine Victor, Will sensed someone else in the area, but as far as we can tell, they're gone now."

"You're telling me _now?_ Now that they're gone?" I roll my eyes up at the ceiling, exasperation mixing in with the worry in my brain. It's my job to protect the family just as much as theirs - do they think I don't worry about what will happen to them? Do they think I don't care?

"The only reason we didn't tell you before is because we know you've been busy with this case and -,"

"But you're telling me now mom, now?"

"We thought you'd want to know what was going on."

I take a deep breath. She's right; of course I want to know. The sense of uselessness surges up inside me again. I should be there, be at home with them, helping. I'm of more use there than I am here.

I shoot a look over my shoulder at Thirteen's room. No-one's bothered to close the door since I left, but I know that won't last long. She doesn't like the idea of people being able to see her, she feels safer with the door shut, as if somehow that'll save her from whatever comes looking for her. She doesn't feel safe, but she doesn't want me protecting her either.

**Thirteen**

_(let the monsters see you smile – let them see you smiling)_

I stare at the door as Bridget changes my bandages. Victor left it open when he left to take the call and no-one's bothered to close it since. Even now, when I feel relatively normal, when I _know I'm safe _– I can't help but stare at it. Every noise from the corridor sends my heartbeat racing. The fear's wrapped itself around my heart, and it's not letting go.

'_Do you ever take your own advice?' _

I remember, without even trying to remember it, a look of disappointment flashing through Victor's eyes. He thinks I should face the fear, should learn to deal with it. He just doesn't get it. _This isn't my fault._

And why should I care what Victor Benedict wants? What has he got anything to do with… anything? Screw what he thinks, I know what's best for me, and it's not like he actually cares. A sickening sensation jolts through my body at that thought, as if someone's put their hand around my heart and started squeezing. _Victor Benedict doesn't care about you, he's never cared about you._

But why does that bother me? Of course Victor Benedict doesn't care, and why would I want him to?

I see him shoot a look at me from out in the hallway. His eyes look suddenly worried: something's definitely troubling him. He looks away quickly and moves further down the hallway so he's hidden from my view.

Bridget smiles at me, a smile that says she thinks she knows something I don't.

"Don't you worry, he'll be back soon." I look up at her round grey eyes, confused as hell.

"What are you talking about?"

Bridget smiles and nods at the open door. "Victor - he won't be on the phone for long, don't worry."

I shake my head. "Why would I worry about that?"

She smirks. "Cos you like him, that's why." She fiddles with the bandages, tightening them so she can tie them off. I stare at her, completely nonplussed.

"What? I don't like Victor I -,"

Oh God. How do I feel about him? For a brief second I want to say I hate him. But that's not true. I don't know what makes me think it but I know for absolute certain that I don't hate Victor Benedict.

"-I don't know him." I finish lamely.

Bridget shrugs. "Doesn't matter. I'm not saying you're hopelessly, madly in love with him, I'm saying you -," she shrugs again. "-You _like _him. That's all."

"I-I don't like him. I _don't_."

"Well why not?" Bridget looks at me, something like horror in her eyes. "I mean have you like…seen him? I mean his _face_, and his _eyes,_ and his -,"

"Awful ponytail?" I supply.

Bridget bursts into fits of giggles. Instead of thinking of the comparisons between her behavior and that of a fourteen-year-old girl, I just sit there, and think.

He looked disappointed with me. And I felt… shattered. Like everything was falling apart just because he was angry.

'_Do you ever take your own advice'? _

I used to be brave. I can just about remember it, the person I was. And maybe, as much as I loathe admitting it. Victor's right.

"You should go back to sleep," Bridget says, helping me do up the ties at the back of my gown. "You could use it."

I nod, not really taking it all in. My heart is hammering in my chest, I can feel beads of sweat forming on the back of my neck, my breath is coming in painful, sickening gasps. It never used to be like this.

As she goes to leave the room, Bridget makes as if to close the door. "Don't-," I say sharply, almost surprising myself at the sound of my own voice.

She looks puzzled. "You won't sleep with the door open."

I think of the flicker of disappointment running through Victors huge brown eyes, of the anger in his voice, and the fact he won't meet my eyes anymore. I think that maybe that might be my fault. And I don't know why, but that hurts, more than anything else.

I take a deep breath. "I'll try."

**Victor **

_(I've been running around, always looking down)_

"Do you know what they were after?" I ask my mom, having to whisper to avoid the curious looks of the hospital staff. "The Savant?"

My mom's voice is hesitant, cautious, like she's worried what I'll think of what she has to say. "We're not sure but… your father thinks they were after Sky."

Sky. My brother Zeds soulfinder. I picture her in my mind, all five foot nothing of her, with her white blonde hair and constantly nervous expression.

I remember all too well what the family had to go through the last time she got into trouble.

"That's it," I decide, not even bothering to keep my voice down any more. "I'm coming home."

Cass can fill in for me, God knows, Thirteen would probably like him. It'll most likely cost me my job, but…. I'm sick and tired of it and what it's doing to me as it is.

"No!" my mother says quickly, her voice full of horror.

"Mom, you need me there,"

"Victor Santiago Joaquin Benedict, what I need is for you to be healthy and happy, and by the sounds of it whilst you may be the first you are most definitely _not _the last and that needs to change!"

"Mom, I'm coming, deal with it!"

"Victor for once will you do something for _you._ Do something you want, not something that'll be good for the family, or good for your job, something for you, something that'll make you happy. God knows you deserve it!" In her anger at my apparent selflessness, she hangs up on me before I can say anything else.

I'm left dumbstruck, in the middle of a hospital, having just been hung up on by my own mother, feeling thoroughly and entirely pissed off at the whole world.

_Do something you want. _What I want is to be at home, with my family, where I know I can keep them safe. _Do something for you._ Is there anything I actually want for me?

Thirteen. That voice in the back of my head, the voice I know is going to be my downfall is back. But it's wrong, it has to be wrong. It is absolutely impossible for Thirteen to be what I want more than anything else.

I don't even know her.

_So change that. _

No. I cover my eyes with my palms, hoping that if I press hard enough, the voice will just leave. Even if it weren't for rules or anything like that, me and Thirteen we're just… wrong.

We've known each other eight days and all we've done is fight. She's convinced I'm a jerk, and she's not one to change her mind. She doesn't care about me.

I pocket my phone and move back up the hall, back towards the job I wish I didn't have to go back to.

I stop short. The door's open. Wide open. The room is empty except for Thirteen. She's not asleep, I can tell she's not, I've spent long enough with her to know what she looks like when she's sleeping, but from where I'm standing, it looks like she's trying.

It looks like finally, she's doing what she's scared to do.

Deciding, for the first time in a long time, that if the world has a problem it can go and screw itself, I pull my phone back out of my pocket and dial Cass's number.

I'd forgotten how good being an idiot felt.

He picks up on the first dial, he always does. I once asked him whether he thought it was a race between him and the telephone. I clear my throat uneasily, then decide to just jump straight in.

"Cass I need to get a hold of something from evidence…"

**Question. Would it interest anyone if I listed the songs the lyrics I use are from at the end of each chapter? Because someone asked me if I would and I wasn't sure…. Anyways… the story! How's it going? Like it? Loathe it? Tell me in a review! (actually don't tell me if you loathe it… I'll cry….and bad things happen when I cry… characters normally die… which would suck for everyone else who sort of like this story) **


	6. Stranger than your sympathy

**So once more, I have produced for you a chapter that a) took too long to be uploaded and b) I am not totally satisfied with. However here it is because a) I managed to salvage the ending b) I'm too lazy to rewrite the whole thing and c) I felt awful about leaving you without a chapter for so long. However (once again I know, I'm sorry I keep doing this) Chapter seven really is good stuff! I know because I started it in my free period at school today! It's a) totally different from the other chapters b) totally different from anything in this story and c) totally Vick's chapter! That's not to say there won't be lots of Thirteen in it, because there will, it's just all from Vick's P.O.V! **

**Which is good because this is pretty much Thirteen's chapter… even though it starts off in Vick's point of view… As always, thankyou for reading, reviewing, favoriting, following – it means loads, and to have made it to 37 in just over a week (8 days and 23 hours to be more precise) is just mindblowing, thank you so much!**

**Disclaimer (brought back by popular request : ) ) What people don't know is that all seven Benedicts are in a band called 'The Benedict Brothers', which are currently touring the USA: breaking the hearts of the pre-teen population and making multiple movies/TV shows for a certain TV network in which they portray teenagers despite the fact many of them have not been teenaged for quite some time. Oh wait…. No sorry that's the Jonas Brothers….. Jonas..Benedict.. it's easy to get confused don't you think? Anyway, I don't actually own the Benedict brothers (wish I did though ) Joss Stirling does. For the record, I also don't own the Jonas Brothers (thank the lord for small mercies) **

**This chapter is for CrazyCookie, who apparently thought I was worth writing his/her longest ever review for! If you're reading this, that made me feel incredibly honored btw, I like the thought that something I wrote made you want to write one of the funniest, most hyper reviews I've ever read in my life : ) (I loved it) and as always to Complete Chocoholic…who stays up late to read and review my stories and always, always manages to say exactly the write thing… a skill I will always, always be jealous of : ) You both rock.**

**Chapter Six**

**Stranger than your sympathy**

**Victor **

_(Younger now than we were before)_

She's only just awake as I head back into her room, the duffel bag heavy in my arms. It's not a huge bag but it's crammed so full I'm amazed she can get it to zip up at all.

I approach her slowly, cautiously; I have no really no idea at all of how she's going to react like this.

"Hey," I say softly, sitting myself down next to the bed. "How're you feeling?"

She takes a deep breath in and I see something that might just be nerves flash through her eyes. If Thirteen's nervous how does she think I feel?

"That's my bag," she says quietly, nodding at the red duffel in my arms. I try for a grin.

"I'd noticed," I say wryly.

She tilts her head back to look me straight in the eyes, a smile playing with the corners of her mouth. "What happened to the rules?" she asks.

I take a deep breath. "I'm…overlooking them, just this once."

She arches her eyebrows impressively. "Rebel."

I snort. "Hardly, apparently Evidence have already gone through it, there's nothing in here they think is important."

She laughs. She actually laughs. It lights up her whole face and I suddenly know exactly why I got that bag for her, exactly why it was the only thing I could think of that would make me happy.

Thirteen's a totally different person when she's happy.

"So basically," she says, still chuckling slightly. "You suck at breaking rules."

I shrug, grinning just as widely as she is. "I've gotten out of the habit, it's gonna take a while to get back into it again."

"Don't worry, I can give you some pointers."

I take a good look at Thirteen. When she's not scared, not angry, when her face is lit up with a smile like she's not got a care in the world, she looks vibrant, unbreakable, alive. She looks like trouble.

If there's anyone who could teach me to break rules, it's her.

Speaking of rules…

"Anyway this," I lift the bag gently onto her lap. "Is yours."

It almost looks like she's attacking it. Wrenching open the zipper, she litters the bed with pairs of jeans, shirts, CD cases, paperback novels; until finally she gets her hands on what it appears she's looking for.

It's a large square-ish book, bound in red fabric. As soon as she's holding it in her hands, a stillness settles over her, a peaceful expression floods her face that I'd never have thought Thirteen capable of.

She glances sideways at me, and suddenly it's like I'm intruding on something intensely private, something that wasn't meant for my eyes. I take a deep breath, gulping. Right now, I don't want to go anywhere, I want to stay here with Thirteen,

But if she wants me to go, I'll just have to go. Because I don't know anything right now, except that I am not getting in another fight with her.

I make as if to stand up, to leave even though I desperately don't want to.

"Don't," Thirteen says softly. "Don't go."

I sit back down slowly, making sure I've heard her correctly before resuming my seat.

"Ok," I say slowly. "Are you sure?

She shrugs. "If you're gonna start breaking rules for me, I'm gonna have to start sharing things with you. Otherwise it's not fair."

And with that she opens the red-bound book. _Photo album,_ I realize now. But not like any I've ever seen before.

You see, regular family photos - the kind taken by shutter happy parents or over-enthusiastic kids - aren't masterpieces by any stretch of the imagination. They do their job and capture a memory, preserving it for life. But when you look at the photo, it's like looking at a cheap copy of the moment.

The photos inside this book are nothing like that. Every single one is stunning, unusual in its own way. There's not a blurred or out of focus shot among them. But they're not posed, not at all, every smiling face, every happy memory, looks totally natural. And every photo you look at transports you straight to the moment it was taken.

Just looking at them makes me feel like I'm looking straight into Thirteen's memory.

"You took these?" I ask, scarcely able to keep the wonder out of my voice. Thirteen looks shocked at my reaction, I see a faint smile creeping over her face. Something tells me Thirteen has never had a whole load to be proud of, I'm more than happy to let her have this.

"It was kind of like a hobby in high school," she says, shrugging.

"A hobby?" I ask incredulously. "When I was in school, _stamp collecting_ was a hobby, _playing bass _was a hobby this… this is a talent you've got here Thirteen."

Even if it wasn't true it would be worth it just for her smile.

**Thirteen**

_(And what would you think of me now? So lucky, so strong, so proud)_

I don't know why I decide I want Victor to stay. I don't know whether I _do _decide, I just kind of know, instinctively, that that's what I want. I've never shared anything like this with anyone before, it's too personal, too close to my heart – if anyone damages this for me, I'll probably just shatter into a million pieces.

But in the weirdest way, in a way I _know _shouldn't feel safe, having Victor see the photos seems… right somehow.

"Why did you need this so badly?" he asks softly. I grimace. It's a simple question, and to me, the answer's simple as well. But to him? I just don't know.

"I have…nightmares," I say softly. "And it seems like sometimes, even when I'm awake, they're haunting me somehow. Like they're following me or something." I swallow, knowing I'm making zero sense whatsoever. "The pictures in here, they just remind me of the way things used to be you know? It doesn't make much sense.."

"Sure it does." Victor looks surprised, indignant even, that I didn't think he'd get it. "Sure it makes sense. You wish you could go back to when…it was easier, things were better, we all do, it's human" For the briefest of seconds I see wistfulness flit over his face. Then, right before my eyes, he shrugs it off and points to a picture.

"Who's this?" he asks, curiosity replacing the sadness in his eyes. "He's in like, every shot."

I lean over to see who he's pointing at, and a twinge of sadness runs through my heart.

"That's Charlie," I whisper. "That's my little brother."

He's fifteen in that shot. His eyes are the teeniest bit bloodshot, surrounded on all sides by shadows he'll never quite be able to get rid of. It's the last picture I ever took of him.

Victor bites his lip, and I see confusion seeping across his face. "I know it sounds weird," he says slowly. "But I just find it hard to think of you having family."

I raise my eyebrows at him. Catching sight of my expression, he continues. "As long as I've known you, you've been all by yourself. I mean – you've not got any family here, you've not had so much as a phone call from anybody. If it was me, my family would outnumber the people in the hospital. But you're alone."

I take a deep breath. "Yeah, I guess I kind of am."

Victor only looks more confused. "But you _have _got a family. You just told me you had a family."

Another deep breath. I shake my family. "I _had_ a family. They died." I've never said it out loud before. It's surprisingly easy, maybe a little too easy. No one's asked about my family. Nobody's really ever given a damn if I'm perfectly honest.

Victor does. He must do because there's pain in his voice when he next speaks. "Thirteen, I am so sorry – I didn't know."

For some reason I don't even question why he cares. Even _my _paranoid brain doesn't give a damn. Because he does care, I'm reasonably convinced of that. And it's been too long since I could say that much of anyone else.

I barely even realize I've opened my mouth until the words spill out. "It was always just my Mom, Charlie and I. Dad cleared off just after Charlie was born, I don't even remember him." I was two years old, I was barely aware Daddy had ever been around until I found out he left.

"My mom was…I mean…she got…." I search for the words to describe exactly what my mother was. I know exactly what I should say, what I think I want to say, but images keep popping into my head – of her helping me with my homework, planning surprise birthday parties for me, waking up early during exam week to bring me pancakes in bed before school – none of those memories fit with the adjectives I want to use, the adjectives I know are the best way of describing her.

My mother, the woman I will always love but will never, ever forgive. In the end I settle with the most ambiguous thing I can think of.

"My mom got pretty anxious when she left the house… she… she basically just stayed in all day when she could." I started taking the school bus the moment I was considered old enough to walk down the dirt track to the main road by myself. I think I might have been about nine years old.

"I…looked after Charlie a lot growing up because you know.. some days mom would get so wrapped up in whatever she was doing, she would just forget to feed us or something. I was always fine with it but… he wasn't."

He was a regular kid, all his friends were regular kids, he couldn't work out why the hell he didn't have a regular family. And I could never find it in my heart to explain to him what was wrong with his mom.

"And then I went to college. Literally about a half hour away from where we lived." For the first five weeks I came home every weekend, if I had days when there were no classes, I'd come home then too.

"I came back one day, and their cars were in the driveway, and it looked like there were people in the house, but no-one was answering the door."

I stood on the porch for three hours until I gave in and called the cops.

"My mom had a heart attack. She'd always had problems with her it but she refused to go to the doctors about it. And – and Charlie didn't hear her, because he – he'd overdosed. That same night."

And this is the part where my head and my heart feel like they're at all out war. Because my head will never stop screaming 'idiot', 'junkie', 'addict' or 'coward' at me, because I will never be able to take back all the things I thought about his drug habit. Thought but mostly never said. He thought I didn't know, he thought he was so great at hiding it from me. I watched him kill himself, sat back and observed as he slowly tore himself and everyone else apart too. I knew exactly what he was doing.

But my heart still denies it. My heart makes up excuses for him, explains away all his stupid, reckless behavior – behavior I'm terrified he must have learnt from me because my mom was always, _always,_ careful with herself – tricks me into thinking I must be mistaken. My heart doesn't want me to remember Charlie for what I know he was.

I realize I'm crying. I dash the tears away impatiently with the back of my hand. I don't cry, not ever, especially not now. There's no sense crying over what's happened. It's already happened, you can't change it.

"Don't," Victor catches hold of my hand as I make to keep wiping away the tears. He pulls it away from my face and holds it in one of his. I can't help but notice how tiny my hand looks in his, how he could probably wrap all his fingers comfortably around my fist.

"Don't you dare," Victor continues as I make to start again with my other hand.

"You, have lost – _everything _– and the only reason you could possibly have for not crying, is not caring. And you do care," he gestures at the photo album, still lying across my lap. "This is proof that you care."

It's like the whole world's suddenly off balance. I look up at Victor and I swear, I see everything else slide out of my vision – he is the _only_ thing I can keep my eyes on.

I'm suddenly aware of the minimal distance between us, of his body inches away from mine, of my hand tucked away inside his. The closeness takes my breath away; it's suffocating me, burying me alive, I need to get away from it, I can't stay here any longer, I'll get hurt, I can feel it deep in my bones.

But another part of me, a bigger, stupider, more naïve part that's conveniently forgotten all the rules of survival I taught myself when, at age eighteen, I found myself totally alone for the first time, tells me that it doesn't mind getting hurt, as long as it never, ever has to leave this moment.

I squeeze my eyes tight shut, try to take a deep breath to clear my head, but nothing works. Once more, my mind is totally out of my control, spiraling into insanity.

Then he speaks again, and I've forgotten everything else. "There's nothing wrong with caring about people Thirteen," Victor says slowly. And it's just enough to wake me up, to help me pull myself out of the tangle of confusion and hurt and fear I'm falling down into.

I can't look him in the eyes as I make my stupid, pathetic, childish comeback. "It hurts," I say softly, not being able to stop myself from trying to express to _someone_ that I'm falling apart inside.

Victor looks at me. Really looks at me. Only a few days ago I would have flinched away from being considered by those eyes that I know don't miss a thing but now – now I don't feel half as scared. It's less like he's sizing me up, more like he's just… _seeing me. _Seeing inside me. I can't help thinking that Victor is smart, and calm and logical. Maybe he can make a better sense of this stupid mess of emotions knotted up inside my heart than I can.

By the looks of it he can. Slowly, cautiously, he reaches forwards and wraps both of his arms around me, pulling me into him. Holding me against him, letting me cry into a suit that probably cost more than my piece of shit pickup truck was worth when it was new.

I lean my forehead against his shoulder as he rubs one hand comfortingly across my back. I can't help but feel like we must have been doing this for years. He moves, I move. I breathe, he breathes.

Not long ago Victor intimidated me, _scared_ me even. Now, right here in this moment, I can't think of a time I've felt this safe.

I wrap one arm around his neck. I can't breathe, can't move can't say a word. One thought and one thought only chases itself around and around my head. _Don't ever let go. _

Victor rests his head on mine, his breath tangling itself in my hair. "I don't know Thirteen," he whispers. "Caring doesn't feel that bad to me at all."

**Well….what did you think? Please, **_**please**_** let me know in a review! I try and write just for myself and for the love of what I think is a good story, but reviews do make a difference to me, they ensure that I at least try and write a little bit for you guys every day, even if I don't get chapters out : ) **

**I also promised I'd list the songs I use for inspiration in the chapters.. here goes: The title is the first line of Sympathy by the Goo Goo Dolls (an awesome song, definitely in my top 25) The first subtitle is from Never say Never by the Fray, a gorgeous song that I never seem to listen to as much as it deserves, and the second subtitle is from Hear You Me by Jimmy Eat World. I've had this song on my ipod since 2010… I've only just stopped crying every time I hear it. I don't own any of these songs. **


	7. A love that will never be or may be

**Well hi everyone…. Well isn't this chapter ridiculously overdue? In my defense, I have a pretty awesome excuse which is… the next I don't know… four chapters (including this one)…yeah I tried to make them into one absolutely massive chapter. All from Vick's point of view. I have literally been slaving away for about two weeks now, before admitting defeat and deciding it needed to be split in half. Then I decided thirds. Now it's quarters. But trust me, it'll be worth it. These four chapters will have drama, romance, and plenty of angst : ) **

**Disclaimer: I'm pretty sure Joss Stirling isn't stupid enough to try and cram four chapters worth of writing into one huge chapter. I, unfortunately, am. Therefore, I am not Joss. **

**Mega apologies to all the people who I told this chapter would be solely from Vicks point of view. It almost made it, It was sooo close. But for some reason I decided to add a bit of Thirteen in. Not quite sure why, it probs didn't need it.. oh wait I am sure why, I just can't tell you guys yet (laughs evilly) **

**As always, thank you to all who faithfully review, you know that I appreciate it, and please continue to do so, it means masses.**

**Chapter One **

**A love that will never be – or may be**

**Victor**

**5:00**

_(Science and Faith) _

Sleep doesn't come easily anymore. It's not nightmares, or fear – nothing's waiting for me on the other side of my eyelids, there's no fear lurking in the recesses of my brain. I just don't sleep.

But tonight that doesn't bother me so much. Sprawled on the couch by the door, I can just make out Thirteen's face through the darkness. Her eyelids are scrunched up over her shockingly blue eyes, and most of her face is obscured by dark red hair, but she's still completely and absolutely stunning as far as I'm concerned.

'_What the hell is this?'_ I ask myself silently, knowing before I've even begun thinking about it, that I won't be able to find an answer. Because I just have no idea anymore.

It's animal attraction and it's chemicals and it's completely and totally about aesthetics, because what guy in his right mind doesn't develop a thing for the blue-eyed redhead who can somehow seem attractive even when she looks like shit – but it feels deeper than that. Much deeper.

Because she's everything I'm not, everything I never have been. I don't blame myself for things I couldn't change, I don't worry about things that were bound to happen anyway. I'm too smart for that.

But she doesn't overanalyze every aspect of her life, she doesn't look before she leaps and she doesn't back down from a fight, even one she knows she can't win. She's too brave for that.

She doesn't seem to trust people and if she was going to trust someone, I have a feeling I wouldn't be her first pick. But she opened up to me when she didn't have to, she faced her fears for me even though she desperately didn't want to.

And I held her in my arms even though between us we're too smart and too brave to ever need anybody else and it felt totally, completely, undeniably…right. Safe. Secure. Flawless. Like it was meant to be. Even though I know that what I am and what she isn't, means that that isn't possible.

Even if I desparately want it to be.

**6:00 **

_(And it's contagious. It's contagious…) _

When Thirteen wakes up it's like someone's flicked a switch – everything in the room changes. The atmosphere shifts, the whole world slips out of balance and suddenly she is the only thing you can look at. Nothing else matters, nothing else is important, just keep looking at her and everything will be fine.

She tumbles out of dreamland and into the real world with a crash it seems to me. One second she's stock still, curled up with her knees to her chest, the next, she's sitting bolt upright, wide-eyed and baffled like the whole business of waking up is completely bewildering to her.

Despite myself, I smile as I watch realization flood into her eyes. Thirteen never does anything by halves and as she begins to wake up properly, her whole body springs into life again.

She's never still. She fidgets, she rolls her eyes, she plays with the ends of her hair, anything to keep herself moving. I feel my smile spread further across my face.

Of course she sees it, I must look like a total idiot just grinning at nothing at all, and it's just like her to say something.

"What are you looking at?" she asks, not accusingly though, not angrily. Not like she would have done if she caught me smiling at her a few days ago. She's just curious.

I shrug, buying myself time to decide on an innocent way of answering that question. I have no words to say that I just want to watch her, no words to describe how much more _alive_ than me she is, even when she looks like she's falling apart. I can't even think of what she'd say if I expressed to her my secret, childish, but undeniable hope that if I look at her long enough, some of that life will bleed into me, some of whatever it is that makes her so… _Thirteen_ will infect me as well.

So instead I just give her the simplest, shortest, most honest answer I can possibly come up with.

"You, I guess."

She stares at me for a second, and I can hear my own heartbeat in my ears. One, two, three heartbeats before she so much as moves.

A smile begins to tease the corners of her mouth and she, too, shrugs.

"OK."

She says it like it's nothing, and I think to myself – she'll never know. She'll never, ever begin to understand how two syllables have sent shivers running down my arms, how my heart has accelerated to an inhuman speed.

Hell, I don't understand it either.

**7:00 **

_(There's a hole in my soul, you can see it in my face)_

At seven the nurses come to change Thirteen's bandages, which means I am banished to the hallway. With nothing to do but stand and stare at the grubby off-white of the walls, I let my guard down, let my mind drift off into thoughts and memories and other far-away places.

That doesn't mean I don't see Callum coming. For one, he is physically imposing, almost impossible to miss in a crowd. There are few people actually taller than me, and he doesn't quite make it, but still – he's a giant amongst men who walks like he owns the world.

And his mind is strong and brutish. Without even meaning to he forces himself into everybody else's brains before he's even opened his mouth to introduce himself. I feel him coming before he's even rounded the corner.

I pretend not to notice him, pretend to be engrossed in the study of the cracks in the wall. I stare at it until my vision blurs but no matter what I am not looking away. He doesn't have to know I'm painfully aware of his presence.

Callum has been a friend of my fathers for years. He hired me as a favor and never, ever expected me to be good at my job. He definitely wasn't banking on my being excellent. Callum is many good things; he's loyal, determined, incredibly brave – and jealous. Of me, of the things I've achieved in only two years time.

I know, and he knows, and he knows that I know, and it's all hideously, painfully awkward. To add insult to injury, he gave me babysitting duty when he knew that I'd rather be out in the field actually doing my job.

But he's my boss and the twenty-five percent of my life that isn't devoted to my family is devoted to my job, so even though every inch of me is screaming that I shouldn't, I look up when he calls my name.

"How're you doing Vick?" he asks, and I don't believe for a second that it's not killing him to keep his voice so light and pleasant.

Without taking my eyes off of the wall, I say, slowly. "I'm good thanks sir."

He nods. "How's she?" he adds, pointing towards Thirteen's room.

Irritation sparks across my skin at his blatant disregard for the fact Thirteen actually has a name, and I fight to keep my voice steady. "_Thirteen _seems to be doing just fine sir."

He nods and for a change I can't read the expression on his face. "We need to talk," he says brusquely. And though the urge to tell him to shove it is almost more than I can take, my job is still the fifty percent of my life that isn't my family. I nod and follow him silently, hating myself more and more for every step I take.

**8:00 **

**Thirteen **

_(It's everything you wanted, everything you don't) _

It's the strangest of things, being a Savant, being totally different to everybody else. Knowing that there's no one else in the world quite like you. I mean… you get used to the solitude, to the emptiness, to living in one long silence. You get used to not fitting in, to feeling like a freak, to knowing that no matter how hard you try, you'll never be quite normal. But you never, ever get used to the questions.

'What am I? Why is this happening to me? What's wrong with me?' They go on and on around your heard, never stopping, never shutting up. They are your only company, the only thing in your life that will never ever leave you. They will drive you insane.

You don't think about meeting another Savant. Or at least, you don't think about _liking _one. There are so few of us, and the majority are so secretive, that you just stop believing after a while, that you will ever find anybody else.

So why haven't I told Victor what I am yet? It's another one of those questions that's driving me insane, chasing itself around my head faster and faster and faster, spinning wildly out of my control. No matter how hard I try I just can't find the answer.

I wish he was here. If he was, I could talk to him, laugh with him, and oddly enough, feel vastly less guilty than I do when he's gone. Because when he's here, I don't have to think about…anything really. His voice fills up the empty spaces in my head, makes me feel safe, confident, complete. When he's speaking, I don't have to listen to anything else, not even my own thoughts.

But when he's gone, there's nothing but me and the silence, and the question going round and round and round my brain in ever decreasing circles.

'_Why haven't you told Victor yet?' _

I used to have a good reason. At least, at the time it seemed like a good reason. I didn't trust him, didn't know him, I didn't believe it when he said he was there to help. That excuse doesn't sound quite as good anymore.

The door thuds open, and my head whips around, my heart racing with the hope that it'll be Victor coming back in. But it's only the doctor, one of many who come in and out every day. She smiles in what I'm sure was meant to be a friendly gesture but to me only feels like a mockery. Because deep down, I know exactly why I haven't come clean to Vick yet, and like everything else in my life, it's rooted in my own cowardice.

I'm too scared I'll lose him. What will he think of me, for keeping it from him so long? For lying to him? For pretending to be innocent when in fact, I know far more about him than he thinks I do. What does Victor Benedict need with girls who betray fragile, still a little shaky trusts? He'll despise me, and for reasons I just can't explain, I couldn't bear that.

"You look great," the doctor enthuses as she examines the pale pink cuts on my stomach. "These are healing up really nicely – in fact," she pauses to deliver another glowing smile. "I'd say you'll be able to go home soon enough."

Home. My eyes widen and I think my jaw drops open but it doesn't matter how ridiculous I look because the word will not leave me alone. They think I can go home? They have no idea, none at all.

I can't go home, there's no home for me to go to.

The feeling's only just beginning to sink in as I realize something that might just be even worse than that.

Whether I tell him or not, by the end of the week, I'll have lost Victor Benedict anyway.

**9:00 **

**Victor **

_(Life goes on, it gets so heavy, the wheel breaks the butterfly) _

I stare at Callum for a full minute, trying to process what he's just said to me. "I-I'm what?" I stutter, almost amazed that my tongue is still working – seconds ago it felt like it was all tied up in knots, like I'd never get another word out.

Callum's just told me I've got my job back.

Maybe that's the wrong way to say it – you can't get back what you never lost – but it's certainly how it feels. Like I've been standing on one side of a locked door, and life as I always knew it is waiting on the other side. Now here's Callum handing me a key. It's… liberating, it's mind blowing it's –

Absolutely bloody awful.

Awful because I know I should be excited, especially when a few days ago, I was furious and frustrated and so very fed up with the world because I couldn't do my job any more. Awful because I know for definite this is not a negotiation we're having right now. We may be sitting in the hospital cafeteria, with full cups of coffee and what passes for pastries in this part of Denver; Callum might have gallantly refused to let me pay for my own Danish, but I will not make the mistake of thinking we're having a nice, sociable breakfast. I don't have any say in the matter whatsoever, and I'll just have to deal with that.

Awful because I still haven't come to a conclusion on how I feel about Thirteen, and if I'm hearing this correctly, if I don't soon, I never will.

But I can't put any of that into the right words to make Callum give a shit, so instead I just murmur a humble "Thank you sir." But then, because maybe I'm sleep deprived, or not as smart as I thought I was, or just because I've been spent too long around Thirteen, I break a cardinal rule. I ask a question. "But what about Thirteen sir?"

Callum sucks in a long breath and looks down his nose at me, fixing me with a gaze so expressionless it would look more at home on a stone carving than a living, breathing man. If I was just a little bit less of a Benedict, that look would have me splayed across the floor, begging for mercy. As it is, I feel like every inch of my body is slowly turning into ice, as the venom in Callum's eyes turns my blood stone cold.

"_Thirteen,"_ he says her name like it hurts him, like acknowledging the existence of another human being who isn't FBI causes him physical pain. Good, I can't help but think. Let it hurt.

Although he's practically wincing this time, Callum says her name again. "_Thirteen_ is almost done making a full recovery from what I hear. We'll have a brief chat with her, then I expect she'll be on her way."

By 'brief chat', I know he means interrogation. For the briefest, most terrifying moment, I think of Thirteen in one of our questioning rooms at the FBI, shivering and senseless with fear like so many of them are by the time we're done with them. The thought makes my stomach churn so much I'm pretty sure I'd have thrown up if I'd actually ingested any food at all that day. She'd hate it, hate every second of it. The haunted look would creep back over her face and the monsters in the shadows would come back again. I clench my fists under the tables where Callum can't see them, digging my nails into my palms so that it hurts. The pain distracts me, prevents the words that have been creeping up to my mouth from sliding out of silence, across my lips and into the real world.

And once I'm concentrating, another thought slips through my mind. I don't think Thirteen would find Callum half as scary as everyone else does. Because you don't tell Thirteen what to do, you don't threaten her and you don't pressure her into doing anything she doesn't want to. Not unless you're very, very stupid. And without his three weapons of choice, I'm not sure how formidable Callum would be really.

Just like David and Goliath, Thirteen could bring Callum crashing down to his knees. I can only hope I'll be there to see it.

"Your expertise is needed elsewhere, Victor. We can deal with Thirteen, don't you worry. Besides, if you're successful today, she won't even need a security guard anymore."

So I'm not even to be there for the interrogation. Well that blows. Not only that, it's also just stupid. I look up at Callum, into his steely grey eyes and wonder what happened to him that means he'll risk the success of a case and the lives of his team to make sure he's always seen as the best of all of us. Even when, as in some cases, he isn't.

My gift makes me the obvious choice for interrogation. People can't lie to me if I decide I want the truth, and they can't fight off my gift either. Then again…would I use it on Thirteen?

Not now, no. I feel a smirk coming on as I think of all the things I know about Thirteen without ever having really asked her. Things that came up in conversations last night, things she told me without even meaning to.

She's from North Carolina. She had a baby brother who watched the X-men. She likes photography, loud music, movies. Jolene her night nurse makes her think of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. She mainlines caffeine and the first thing she's going to do once she's out of hospital and allowed it, is treat herself to a huge cup of decent coffee.

So many little things that make up a person. One of them by themselves is probably useless, irrelevant, but added all together they make a Thirteen. And then it hits me, just like that. It's like being struck by lightning, like the light bulb where my brain should be has finally burst into life. I know, precisely how I feel about Thirteen. And I have to tell her now, before it's all too late.

I leap to my feet, sending my chair flying backwards. I don't say a word to Callum as I practically run towards the stairs. Something whispers to me, deep in the heart of what I am, that nothing else will ever be as important as this.

**10:00 **

_(Let the monsters see you smile, let them see you smiling) _

When I burst into her room, what I see when I get there almost stops me dead in my tracks. It sounds idiotic, but Thirteen is standing up. Her face is as white as a sheet, there's a tremor running across her body and I can only imagine how she must feel, given this is the first time she's really moved since I met her. But she's standing up.

She's managed to pull on jeans and a T-shirt and I can't help but marvel how…normal she looks. How whole. If you really look at her, you can see the pale edge to her skin, the shadows under her eyes. But from first glances, she looks just like any other girl. The fact that I know she's more than that is irrelevant, she no longer looks broken and lost and scared, just…ordinary.

I can't think of the last time I saw anything more stunning.

I must be staring again, because she catches my eye and laughs. "Nice of you to show up," she says, and though her voice is light, I feel like there's something more going on underneath.

I narrow my eyes. "What's going on?"

She grimaces. "I'm going to be discharged in a few days -,"

My stomach does a backflip at the idea of her leaving again, but I say nothing about it. "That's…great, Thirteen," I say slowly. She shrugs. There's definitely something up, she seems…subdued. "

All of a sudden, I just can't keep quiet anymore.

"I'm leaving, Thirteen."

She looks up at me, and I'm surprised to see no surprise, no confusion flashing through her eyes. Just something sad and dull and not quite right. Something that makes me feel like she has something on her mind, something she wants to tell me, but when she does speak, all she says is – "Oh."

I bite my lip. 'Where do I go from here?' I think desperately to myself. Thirteen, as though she knows she won't be getting a reply any time soon, picks up a dark blue hoodie from the chair beside her bed and attempts to pull it on in stiff, jerky movements that I can tell are hurting her even if she doesn't say a word.

Without thinking about what I'm doing or why I'm doing it or how well it'll go down, I cross the room in two strides and pull the bottom of the hoodie gently downwards, helping her shrug it on.

She whispers her thanks and stares down at her feet. For a second I think that's it, until she suddenly looks sharply up at me. "Why are you leaving?" she asks.

I open my mouth to reply, but before I can I'm suddenly struck by how close to her I'm now standing, how when she looks up at me, our faces are only inches apart. My heart does a little skip and for a second I can barely breathe. Until I manage to choke out. "It's my job, nothing I can do about it."

I'm almost as close as it's physically possible to stand next to someone, and it's all I can do to stop myself from moving closer, from reaching out just that little bit further. I can't quite explain it, but I know that I have to get closer to her, if I don't, I may lose my mind. Totally unaware that I'm fighting a civil war with my own brain, Thirteen smiles dimly and sighs. "Your job kind of sucks you know that?"

"Yeah," I manage to whisper. "I kind of do."

And then, before I've even quite gotten around to realizing that it's what I want, I lean forward and kiss her.

The surprise at what I've done is so huge I pull away almost instantly. "I shouldn't have done that," I stammer, mind reeling with confusion. "Jesus Christ that was stupid, Thirteen I'm so sorry, I -,"

She rolls her eyes. "For once in your life, how about just shutting up?"

I do as I'm told as she wraps one arm around my neck, standing on tiptoes to brush my lips with hers. I cup one hand around her face, tangling my fingers up in her dark red hair, the other hand rests lightly on the small of her back. I kiss her, she kisses me, neither of us stops for air. Who needs oxygen anyway?

Some first kisses are quick, awkward – shots in the dark that you just might be right or else passionate, stolen moments when you know you almost definitely aren't. This is neither.

It feels…perfect. Like it was always meant to happen. Like we've been like this for a thousand years.

I close my eyes and lose myself in the moment. In the rightness, in the faultlessness. Moving my hand away from her back, I find Thirteen's right hand and lace my fingers with hers, holding on as if just keeping hold of her will keep us safe. As if as long as I hold on, this moment will never end.

**I really have nothing to say any more… except that I exhausted myself writing this chapter, so I really hope it's good enough sooo… Review? Follow? Favorite? **


	8. Losing your memory

**Disclaimer: Joss Stirling, as lilyofthedarkvalley and I were discussing, is actually Julia Golding. She is not, however, actually me, meaning I am not her, meaning I do not own this series. Just FYI, my name is also not as cool as hers, and I do not have a husband named Joss (or a husband by any name BTW) but still..I digress.**

**This chapter is for lilyofthedarkvalley, who posted such a long and awesome review, my email server couldn't send the whole thing to me. **

**Chapter Eight**

**Losing your memory**

**11:00 **

**Thirteen **

_(And history books forgot about us, and the bible didn't mention us)_

Good memories are really just moments you wish could've lasted forever. Kissing Vick, so close to him I can feel his heartbeat underneath my palms, slow, calm, steady – all the reassurance I could possibly need to tell me I'm right where I'm supposed to be right now – it's like everything makes sense again. Like my mind is coming back to earth again, like maybe this time, it won't fly away from me. Vick will keep me grounded.

Without even meaning to, I smile, and almost simultaneously, feel him smile in reply. Like just by smiling, I've made him smile too. I like that. It's so easy – too easy – to lose yourself in moments like these, to forget the world and everything else around you. I should know better than to let myself get caught up, but it's too hard, we're too close, and everything about this feels just right. I ignore caution and go for temptation instead, I pull Vick's head down towards me to kiss him even harder.

As always, my recklessness comes at a price- you'd have thought I'd have learnt by now that it does tend to. What had been, up till now, perfect silence, is broken by a polite cough. The noise is surreptitious, unobtrusive, but Victor reacts to it as if it's a gunshot, head jerking up, eyes bright with alarm, body recoiling from mine as if by putting enough distance between us, he can deny that anything ever happened.

There's a man standing in the doorway, tall, almost as tall as Vick I notice absently, but hulking where Vick is slender, menacing where Vick is almost always impassive. A man who likes people to be scared of him, I realize. Almost instinctively I decide that I'm not going to be.

"Agent Benedict," he says softly, raising his eyebrows at Vick. From the corner of my eye, I watch him, surprised at how suddenly subdued and submissive he's become, his eyes fixed on the ground. There's no reason for Vick to be scared of this guy, not from what I've seen anyway. Unless – "So this is your boss then?" I ask softly, directing my words at Vick but keeping my eyes firmly locked on the man in the doorway.

Vick squeezes my hand in what I think is supposed to be a warning, and it's only when he does that I realize he never let go of it.

"Yeah," he says slowly, grudgingly, like he doesn't want to so much as utter the word.

"Yeah, he's my boss." He raises his head, finally, and the look in his eyes is one I don't recognize. "Thirteen, this is Callum. Callum…" He looks at his boss so warily I want to remind him it's not his job to worry about me.

I check myself for two reasons. Firstly, up until now, it _was_ his job to worry about me. Secondly… there is something inherently selfish about resenting someone for caring when they're the first person to do so for a while. God knows no-one else gives a shit about how I feel.

Callum inclines his head to me, a nod that I imagine was supposed to look polite but I get the feeling the meaning behind it was much more along the lines of being mocking.

"Good to meet you Thirteen," he says, the faintest smile playing across his lips. The liar. He stares at me for a second, but I don't meet his eyes, don't even pretend like I give a shit what he thinks. I know exactly how this game works. He can't intimidate me if I don't care.

When he eventually looks away, he settles his gaze on Vick again. "Shouldn't you be leaving?" He asks, casually.

A stab of something incredibly painful shoots across my heart. For the two minutes of absolute perfection that had involved Vick and I kissing in a hospital room, I had totally forgotten that he was leaving. Forgotten that I almost definitely would never see him again.

Without even meaning too, I tighten my grip on his hand. It's not that I need him to stay, because I don't. I'm not a small child, I know deep inside myself that I'll be just fine if he goes. It's that I want him to stay, I don't _want_ to lose him.

And yet...maybe I am just a little bit of a small child. Because if I'm honest with myself, I want him to want that too, I want him to care enough about me to want to stay here. Who doesn't want that?

Vick squeezes my hand again, ever so carefully. And it's absolutely mind-boggling how I can infer, with one casual gesture that he's telling me he has no choice, that he has to go.

That I have to let him go.

With his free hand, he pulls something from his jacket – a business card from the look of it. Slowly, carefully, making sure Callum doesn't notice, he tucks it into my back pocket. His cell phone number. Well that would be helpful if I had a cell phone.

His point is still valid though. I sigh, squeeze my eyes shut and do my best to ignore the voice in my head screaming at me that if I let go now, I'll regret it forever, that everything will feel worn out and cold and useless again the minute Vick leaves the room. I unwind my fingers from around his hand, one by one, biting my lip to keep myself from telling him both how much I fucking hate him right now and how much I desperately don't want him to leave me.

The minute I've let him go, I open my eyes to watch him walk steadily out of the room, notice how his fingers move feverishly through his pockets, making sure he has everything. He doesn't look back.

I shut my eyes again and wish myself back to the kiss. To the moment that really, really should have lasted forever.

**12:00 **

_(I think I'm moving but I go nowhere)_

I expect Callum to leave as soon as Victor does, but instead he smiles at me, a smile cold enough to freeze me to death. "Come with me," he says, and it's not a question, but an order. I don't move. He seems to have forgotten that I'm not FBI, I'm not one of his lackeys, and there is absolutely no reason why I should go with him.

I raise one eyebrow impressively. _I'm not scared of you._ I wonder, maybe if I think it hard enough he'll get the message and leave me well alone. Somehow I doubt it.

"Thirteen," Callum says, in a placating sort of voice. "I just want to ask you a few little questions, that's all. It won't take long, and once we're done you'll never have to see us again, it'll all be over, I promise."

No it won't. He's talking like I don't remember what happened to me. Like I don't know that it's not all going to be fine. In my life I've probably seen at least twice the number of instances where everything did not end in a happy ever after than he ever will. He can't lie to me and think he'll get away with it.

Some of this must show on my face, because he takes a step closer to me and says, quietly, threateningly. "If you don't come by yourself, I have plenty of people at my disposal who will quite happily _make you_ come with me."

The warning hangs in the air between us. Because I'm an idiot, I still fail to find it frightening, but that doesn't mean that I am not absolutely, completely, one hundred percent certain that Callum will carry it out.

If I'm going anywhere, whether I want to or not, whether it'll kill me or not – I'm going by myself. No-one is going to make me go anywhere I don't want to. I like to think that shows on my face as I take a deep breath and tell Callum that I'm right behind him.

In the events of the last half hour, I'd almost forgotten that walking was still a new and exciting concept for my feeble body. My limbs feel hollow, like the life they once held inside them has been all drained out. Just breathing hurts, the pain in my chest flaring up every time I try and do so. Every step I take through the hospital, following Callum's footsteps, is one less step I have to take before I can stop.

We eventually come to a small room with couches and a TV, the kind of room families stay in when one of their own is very, very sick. Terminal sick. The kind of room they go to in order to escape the fear and the claustrophobia and the chilling, ominous almost-silence of the intensive care unit. Shivers run up and down my spine as Callum instructs me to take a seat, and I pick the couch closest to the door, the one that would allow me to get out fastest if I for some reason needed to. Not that I'd get very far.

There's someone else in the room, a young woman, not much older than me I'd say, with light blonde hair and sweet, optimistic grey eyes. "Thirteen, this is Special Agent Garcia," Callum says, sitting down next to her. Agent Garcia smiles. "Call me Kelly," she says, in a

way that tells me that plenty of people have begged her for the privilege of doing so. I decide instantaneously, in a similar way that I decided not to be afraid of Callum, that I will not be calling Garcia Kelly.

"Thirteen," Callum continues. "We're going to ask you a few questions, about your personal life and the night you were attacked. It goes without saying that if you lie, the consequences will be serious."

Even as he talks, my eyes are drawn to the small audio recorder on the table between the couch I'm on, and Callum and Garcia. So they want to interrogate me do they? I lean back into the sofa, draping one leg over the other, making sure to look as relaxed as possible. The only way I'm getting out of here quickly is to let them know that I am not scared of them. I'll answer their questions, sure, but they'll not get anything more out of me. If they think they can break me, they'd be wrong. Better men than Callum have tried.

Garcia starts off with the simplest of all questions, leaning forward to press the start button on the audio recorder as she does so.

"Please state your name."

I roll my eyes slightly. "Thirteen."

"Last name?"

"Harrison."

Garcia nods, and Callum notes something down on a heap of papers in his lap. "Is Thirteen your given name? or a nickname?"

"It's my given name." I once asked my mother what she'd been thinking when she named me. All she'd said was, 'it seemed appropriate'.

"And what is your date of birth?"

"February thirteenth, nineteen ninety."

"You're twenty-two?"

I shoot Garcia a contemptuous look. I can't help it, her deliberate cluelessness is doing my head in. "Obviously," I drawl.

"And where were you born?"

"Just outside Charleston, South Carolina."

"Any siblings?"

I feel a flutter of nerves at the thought of mentioning Charlie. I don't want to talk about him, not to these people. They would color him and judge him without even trying to understand.

"Is that relevant?"

"Possibly," Callum raises his eyes from his papers for the first time to stare straight at me. "Answer the question."

I bite my lip and narrow my eyes slightly. "Yeah, one."

"A brother named Charles Jonah Harrison?"

I nod. It's been a long time since I heard someone use his full name. The name no-one used except to scold him, the name he never deigned to respond to. Chills run up and down my spine at the thought of him being remembered forever by a name he barely recognized.

"And both he and your mother, Marilyn Theresa Harrison, died on the sixth November, 2010?"

Again I nod. My tongue is tied up in knots, I don't think I could say anything even if I wanted to.

"Ok," Garcia says brightly. I wince slightly, she's just all together far too cheerful for the occasion. I'm forced to remind myself that she almost definitely only means well. "Well, it seems like we've got all our facts straight at least. So," she pauses a second, and surveys me. "The night you were attacked, Thirteen."

Nerves begin to bubble up inside me, massive great butterflies jostling for room in my stomach. I realize with a slight thud of suppressed memory, that this will be the first time I've ever really told anyone about it.

Garcia looks as if she's trying to find the most tactful way to say an extremely tactless thing. "Tell us what happened, Thirteen."

Where to even start? I cast my mind back, - _sitting in the gas station, so cold I could feel my blood freezing, driving away, fear coursing through my veins, foot on the gas. Sitting in the rain listening to the Script. Waking up in hospital, seeing Vick, nightmares, 'shut the door', talking to Vick, telling him about Charlie, kissing Vick. _

No. No wait. They're asking about _the attack. _I need to be thinking about the attack. But it's like there's a huge black hole in my mind, sucking everything in, erasing everything, swallowing it whole.

"Thirteen, you need to tell us about the night you were attacked," Garcia prods gently, her voice soft and reassuring and so very far away.

My mind is spinning round in circles again, twisting this way and that, spiraling out of control. "No," I manage to choke out.

Callum raises his eyebrows. "What do you mean no?" he asks quietly, dangerously.

I raise my head to meet his. "I mean I don't remember."

**Well, that was the quickest it's ever taken me to write a chapter for you people… repay me with a review? Or maybe a follow? Perhaps even a favorite? It will be rewarded with as many cookies as you can eat! **


	9. Tomorrow is cancelled

**Ignore my earlier Authors note…****This ****is the quickest it's ever taken me to write a chapter : ) You're all worth it. **

**Disclaimer: I somehow don't think Joss Stirling listens to the Script. I do. All. The. Time. Therefore, I am me, not Joss Stirling. So I don't own this series. However, on a totally different note, if you don't already love the Script, you should. The lads exist purely to be adored : ) **

**This chapter is for fearless0601, who got so excited when I told her what happened at the end of Chapter seven, then I forgot to dedicate it to her. And then I dedicated the last chapter to someone else (she deserved it though,) you know you're my favorite Bestie landshark. It's also for IRead2Much4eva, who so eloquently said 'let them find out they're soulfinders already' would it make it up to you if I said soon..very very soon?**

**Chapter Nine**

**Due to lack of interest, tomorrow is cancelled**

**13:00 **

**Victor **

_(Let the clocks be reset and the pendulums held)_

Cass doesn't say a word to me practically the entire drive from the hospital. Which is both good and weird. Good, because that way all I have to think about is Thirteen, kissing her, holding her hand, wondering aimlessly whether she'll call me back. Telling myself not to get my hopes us but raising them anyway because having something to hope for is too damn addictive.

Curious because in the three years I've known him, Cass has scarcely ever been silent. He laughs, he jokes, he smiles, he shouts. He never, ever, shuts up.

I watch the road as he drives us through Denver, staring at the people and the buildings and the traffic without seeing any of it. Struggling with my own brain, wrenching my thoughts away from Thirteen. I eventually find the peace of mind to ask – "Cass where the hell are we going?"

He jumps slightly – he's been far off in Cassland, as Garcia would say – and shakes himself. "Didn't Callum tell you?" he asks nervously.

I shake my head. "Callum and I…aren't on brilliant terms right now."

Cass gives me a nervous grin. "Watch yourself man, he's on the warpath right now, I'd hate for it to be you he takes it all out on."

I want to tell him that it's too late, that Callum's already got it out for me, but I don't dare. That would mean explaining far too many things, things I haven't gotten up the courage to explain to myself yet. All I do is nod. "Go on," I say slowly.

Cass coughs. "Well, we're on our way to check out what is the last known residence of someone who might just be our killer."

I raise my eyebrows. "What, just us?" No SWAT team, no backup, just two guys with a pair of handguns? We're good but Jesus Christ, no one's that good.

Cass gulps, and I realize all of a sudden why he's been so silent, in fact I could kick myself for not spotting it sooner. He's scared. Terrified even. "We're not sure this is our guy," he says weakly. "So we can't send a whole load of snipers and so on in, just in case the only person's living there's some old cat lady or something." He sighs. "It's just you and me, bud."

**14:00**

_(Slow the clock, it's ticking loud, I feel that time is running out)_

When we finally reach our destination, I'm officially worried about my mental state. Because right now…I should be terrified, crapping myself, the works. I should be desperately seeking any other way to get the job done that doesn't involve actually doing it. Or else – resigning myself to the fact I may be living on borrowed time from now on.

But I'm just not. Maybe I've been doing this job too long, maybe I'm just passed being scared. I don't know, all I do know is that as I stare up at the building that in two seconds I will be entering gun at the ready, I feel…numb…blank even.

This doesn't feel real anymore. Being with Thirteen, all those days in the hospital, that felt real. This just feels like a game. A dangerous game but a game none the less.

I shiver and check my watch. Cass, who has gone in search of a back door, and I agreed that we'd enter the house at quarter past two. It is now fourteen minutes past.

How slowly a minute passes. You'd think they'd fly by, just a tiny fraction of time. Minutes of your life fly by, minutes you weren't even bothering to count, minutes you don't even know are gone until you can't find them anymore. But minutes on a clock drag, slower and slower. I find myself almost wishing this minute was over, so that I could stop delaying the inevitable and get on with things.

I'm not scared, but I sense I will be if I stand for too long thinking about everything.

I check my watch again and witness the final passing of the minute. Time to go.

Wrapping my fingers around my gun I proceed towards the door. When we rang the bell upon our arrival, no-one answered. It was agreed they'd be given five minutes to come back from any errands or decide they did want to answer the bell after all. No-one came.

I kick the door open, and venture in, slowly, carefully. I'm almost blinded by the darkness inside, it seems to drip off all the surfaces, hang from the rafters, ooze from the walls. It's like venturing into the jaws of some colossal animal. I take a deep breath and force myself further in. On my right is what was the kitchen, on the left a family room, but it's evident that no-one has lived here in years…no-one could live like this. Trapped in so much darkness.

A sound jars through the silence, a slight creaking from above me. I freeze, every single muscle in my body trembling with shock. I was certain this place was deserted. Then I realize something that makes my body melt from panic to embarrassment. Cass is in the house too, he was going to start upstairs whilst I looked downstairs. _It was only Cass._

I allow myself to relax for approximately two seconds before a scream, high and blood-curdling rips through the air. I don't think about what I'm doing –just screw the consequences –and leap towards the stairs taking them two at a time. My heart starts to hammer in my ears, beating faster and faster and faster.

Then I reach the top of the stairs and it stops completely. I'm standing in a loft that must once have been a small child's room. Every inch of space is covered in toys: china dolls, stuffed animals, action men, barbies, all of them staring down at me, glass eyes wide, like they're trying to send me a warning. Shivers start in my stomach and wrap themselves all the way around my heart.

I take a step forward – and something wraps itself around my ankle.

Panic stabs me in the heart, followed by a huge flood of adrenaline. I kick out, twisting myself free, wrapping my finger safely around the trigger. But a voice, shaky and distant, calls my name, forcing me to look down.

Cass is lying on the floor, so still I can barely see him in the darkness. His face is filthy with dust from being face-down on the floor, but it's not his face I'm looking at.

There's blood everywhere. All down his front, seeping through his jacket. He's pressed his hand over the wounds but blood just bubbles up through his fingers. There's too much of it, far too much, I'm no doctor but I know that at least. No-one could survive losing that much blood. I look at Cass and he knows it too.

"Vick," he croaks.

"You're gonna be ok, bud," I lie through my teeth, because even if we both know I'm lying, I need to say it out loud. Maybe if I do that'll make the words come true.

"No, Vick, listen to me, you've got to-,"

Cass's warning comes too late. Someone laughs, and it sounds like footsteps on broken glass. I look up. Too late.

I don't even realize he's got a gun until I see a flash and pain explodes across my chest. I can feel myself being torn apart as I topple backwards. I stare up at the sea of glass stares looking down at me, and wish God would do me a favor and replace them all with a pair of blue eyes.

**15:00**

**Thirteen**

_(Let me go, I will run, I will not be silent)_

"You…can't remember," Callum says slowly. I nod furiously, my brain churning with panic. Callum glances at Garcia, who shrugs, then looks back at me. His eyes narrow. "You're lying," he declares.

I go to shake my head frantically, but a sudden wave of nausea stops me in my tracks. Dizziness spirals from my brain to my toes, the room is spinning, I'm falling down, down, down. I can't breathe, I'm choking, someone help me!

"Should I get a doctor?" Garcia asks, but she sounds like she's on the other side of a thick wall. Her voice ripples over me as if it's coming from a long, long way away.

"No." Callum sounds closer, in fact, he sounds too close. I shrink into myself, as far away from him as I can possibly get. From far, far away, I see him shaking his head. "No," he tells Garcia. "She's faking, she doesn't want to answer the question is all."

Words can't even begin to cover what I want to tell him to go do to himself. I open my mouth to shout at him, but even as I do, I shut it again, a wave of nausea hitting me so hard I'm afraid if I don't shut my mouth I'll be violently sick on the carpet.

"What do I do" Garcia asks tentatively. Callum stands inches away from where I'm sitting now, considering me. "Get Victor on the phone," he instructs her. "Maybe she'll be more forthcoming with him, and even if she's not…well you know as well as I do what he's capable of."

They're calling Vick. Vick's coming back. That's all it seems to take to steady the spinning, to bring the world back in balance. Victor's coming to bring be back down to earth again, and this time I'm not letting him go.

But as I watch Garcia, the phone pressed firmly to her face, I feel something worse than the nausea, worse than anything I've felt before sink into my soul. An ice-cold dread, tearing at my insides, eating me alive.

"What's wrong?" Callum asks, as a frown spreads across Garcia's face. "I can't get hold of him," she says. "Or Cass. Both of their cells go straight to answerphone."

Callum shrugs. "Try them again, one of them is bound to pick up the second time."

"No," I whisper. "No they're not."

I know, with absolute certainty and very little interest as to how I know, that something's happened to Vick.

Something bad.


	10. Twenty Four Hours In America

**I'm proud of this chapter, and though I'm not quite sure…I think you guys might enjoy it too : ) I really hope you do anyway.**

**Disclaimer: Joss Stirling owns Finding Sky, the Benedicts, Wrickenride, Mr. Joe..the whole friggin universe etc. etc. All I own is the tiny little fragment of this universe I like to call Thirteen : ) **

**This chapter is for charlie-BVB, here's your cookie honey, hope you enjoy it : ) And also for fearless0601, in the hope that one day she remembers she loves being my bestie really, despite all the fanfiction horror I put her through. **

**Chapter Ten**

**Twenty-Four Hours in America**

**Thirteen**

_(How to save a life)_

My heart hammers in my chest, my breath coming in short, sudden gasps. The same thought keeps flickering through my head. _Vick, Vick, have to find Vick. _Every time I shut my eyes I see his face, super-imposed over my eyeballs. Panic keeps bubbling up inside my chest, suffocating me, crushing me from the inside out. _I need to find him._

Callum and Garcia stand in the corner, talking between themselves in hushed voices, shooting glances my way every other second. This is getting us absolutely nowhere.

There are some times in life, when you should follow the rules, when you should keep your head down and stay out of trouble. When you should do as others tell you, because they're convinced they know best.

Then again, there are times when going with your gut, doing what you think is right, just because it feels right, is the only option.

"What the hell is going on?" I ask, surprised at how strong and clear my voice sounds, seeing as how I feel like I'm about to shatter. Callum and Garcia look up, but don't reply, instead continuing their hushed conversation.

"I said," I dig my thumbnail into my palm at this, keeping my mind on the pain and off everybody else. "I said what the hell's going on?"

"What does it look like?" Callum arches his eyebrows. "We're trying to work out a way to find our dear Agent Benedict."

"Really?" I cut back, irritation prickling along my skin slowly, subtly. There's something about Callum's voice that's not quite sincere, like he's not taking it seriously. As far as I'm concerned, Vick Benedict is to be taken seriously.

"Because to me it looks like you're just standing around talking."

That gets Callum's attention. He turns to face me properly now. "And I suppose, Miss Thirteen, that you have a better suggestion."

I shrug. "As it happens I do, actually." The words escape my mouth before I can stop them, before I even think about what saying them will mean for me.

Because the thing about secrets is that we have them for a reason, we don't decide to keep them just for the fun of it. I can feel all my reasons shattering, one by one. All I can see now, is Vick's face, all I can think is that he's missing he's in danger.

Secrets keep us safe, secure, they look after us when we're feeling too weak to look after ourselves. But I can feel my secret slowly starting to hurt me – hurt Vick. Who am I to let that happen?

I take a breath. "I can find him," I say, rushing the words for fear I won't say them if I wait much longer. "I can find Vick."

Callum shakes his head imperiously, as if the very notion that I can do something he can't is beneath even his contemplation. "If he's not answering his phone, Thirteen, then we _can't_ find him. We have no way of knowing where he is."

"I can find him," I repeat. Callum's doubt is all I need to reassure me this is what I want to be doing. Vick is the reason I'm taking the plunge, but Callum has single-handedly convinced me to jump in faster than I'd have thought possible.

"I can find anyone."

Garcia's eyebrows almost disappear off of her face in shock. "You're like Victor?" she gasps. "You're…you can… you're _special_?"

I fix my eyes on Callum's. "Yeah, yeah I am."

**Victor **

_(On sleepless roads the sleepless go)_

I'd never thought much about how I'd die, but everyone has their macabre little fantasies, their basic idea of how they'd like to go when their time comes. This wasn't mine.

With every thump of my heart in my chest, I can feel the life draining from my body. Ironic really, that the organ that always kept me alive is slowly killing me.

Everything seems less important now. Thoughts and questions and half-formed worries spin around my brain but none of them make sense anymore. Memories flit before my eyes, except they're not really memories anymore because I don't recall any of the. I think I see a smoking gun, mountains, a body, a pickup truck, a house on top of the world – and a girl.

Yes, definitely a girl. A red haired girl with wary eyes walking away with my heart in her back pocket.

**Thirteen**

_(I die, each time, you look away)_

I always forget how much it hurts, my 'gift'. And absence from it hasn't made the pain any more bearable. But it's something at least. Something that drowns out the panic and the anguish and the constant thoughts of a brown-eyed boy who can see straight into my soul.

It's something to concentrate on when I'm scared to think about everything else, when I can't even begin to trust my own thoughts anymore.

And anyway, the pain my power causes is nothing compared to the feeling of my heart screaming at the prospect of losing Vick. I hold his business card in my hands, turning it over and over in my fingers, clutching onto it like it's a lucky charm.

It's the only physical link I have to him, the only thing I have to show for a week and a half with the man and a kiss that broke my heart with the way it ended far too soon. If I find him, I tell myself firmly, I am not letting go of him. Not ever. Not if I can help it anyway.

When I do find him, it's like running into a brick wall. Everything just stops for a second.

_I've found him, I've found him, I've found him _

Every though freezes, every breath catches, my heart holds hill inside of my chest.

'I'm coming Vick' I think, without even meaning to think it, and before I remember – too late – that I banned myself from it, I reach out towards his mind, comforting, forbidden, so close and yet so far away.

Next thing I know, I'm running. Not even thinking about what I'm doing, just knowing for sure and for definite, that if I don't get to Vick _now_, my heart's going to explode.

I don't even feel Garcia tackle me until I hit the ground. She's shouting at me, telling me not to be an idiot, to stop, to think, but I'm not even listening anymore.

'_I'm coming Vick, I'm coming' _

**Victor **

_(The broken locks were a warning, you got inside my head)_

I'll tell stories for years to come of how the words bring me back to life. '_I'm coming Vick',_ whispering through my minds empty spaces. The voice is warm and raspy and so very, very familiar. I move a little bit, turn my head towards the voice before realizing that it's coming from _inside _me, not outside.

Who do I know that sounds like that? Whose voice is it, echoing through my brain? Who do I know with a voice that would sound like a drawl in any accent and just happens to be southern?

Thirteen. But that's not possible.

Then there's a voice. A shout that definitely _is _coming from outside of my head, echoing through the house. I want to raise my head, to see who's come, who it is that's found me, but my body's forgotten how to move. All I can do is lie there, watching the FBI windbreakers swarm around me, I pick out faces of people I know, people I've worked with, but I can't remember any of their names. Not that it matters, there's only one thing I can possibly think about.

How did I hear Thirteen inside my head?

I can think of an answer. An answer that makes everything clearer, an answer that explains everything. An answer that absolutely sucks.

Thirteen is a Savant. More than that, Thirteen is my soulfinder. And she lied about it.

**Thirteen **

_(I've got too much love, running through my veins, to go to waste)_

They refuse to let me see him. I know he's in this hospital, because the FBI presence in the building increases by something like fifty percent in the space of ten minutes. But they don't let me see him.

First he's in surgery, then he's recovering, then he's sleeping, being visited by the doctor, talking with Callum, then sleeping again. The excuses go on and on and on until I don't even know why I'm still asking.

Except that I do know, I know exactly. I have to see Vick, I have to.

I stare up at the cracks in the ceiling, trying to find an answer up there, not exactly praying but maybe something similar when I realize I simply can't take it anymore.

It's the middle of the night, no-one can stop me from seeing him. I mean…they can try, but the results aren't going to be pretty. I need to see him, to talk to him, to make sure he's all right.

I need him to tell me it's going to be OK.

I ease myself out of bed, grabbing a hoodie off of a chair. It's the hoodie I wore when Vick kissed me, and though there's nothing remarkable about it at all, wearing it feels lucky somehow. The only shoes I have are a pair of thick sneakers that squeak as you walk in them, so I go barefoot.

It's impossible to sneak around in a hospital –there are always people about, no matter what the hour, but I try my best to look natural as I walk from my ward to the main hallway. There are still bandages wrapped around my chest, but my nurses have mostly forgotten me, and no-one bats an eyelid as I walk past the main desk.

Vick is in a private room, away from all the wards, the kind of room they put famous people in when they don't want the paparazzi knowing that they're sick. I know that much, at least. How to get to it is a totally different question.

After wandering aimlessly through antiseptic smelling corridors, I eventually find a map of the hospital. Seven flights of stairs later, I'm standing in the hallway outside what I really hope is his room, looking around me for the FBI.

I see Garcia at the end of the hall, talking to someone who might just be Callum but I can't tell from here, and I'm not waiting to find out.

Nerves wrap themselves around my throat, squeezing all the air out of my body. Suddenly I can't breathe, can't think of anything apart from how I feel like I'm going to be violently sick. I want to see Vick, I do. I'm just scared he won't want to see me.

_Now. Do it now, Thirteen_. I urge myself. _Before Garcia comes down the hall, you don't have to stay long just go. _

It's deathly dark in Vick's room, all I can see is the outline of his bed, and I curse myself for not thinking he'd be asleep.

_For the love of God Thirteen, the man's been shot. Of course he wants to sleep. What the hell's wrong with you anyway? _I demand of myself.

But just being in the same room as him is intoxicating, just knowing he's here makes everything suddenly feel so much better. I sink to my knees by the door, wrapping myself up in the feeling, desperate to keep it for as long as I can.

**Victor **

_(Welcome Home)_

The minute she enters the room, I know it's Thirteen. I can't see her at all, it's too dark for that, but I just know instantly and automatically that it's her. I don't know how I feel about that.

Part of me is angry, pissed beyond belief. The other part needs to see her, touch her, hold her right now, before I go insane. Thirteen Harrison, my soulfinder.

_She lied_, the angry part of my brain hisses. _She didn't tell you she was a Savant. She's your soulfinder, and she lied._

But she's still my soulfinder, so I say, slowly, carefully, my first words in hours. "I know you're there, Thirteen."

I can feel her surprise from here, she thought I was asleep, hadn't expected me to see her come in. She says none of that though, all she gets out is a lame little –"Hey."

Hey? And then it just bursts out of me.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me you were a Savant?" I want to shout it, to scream it, but all my pathetic body can manage is a disgruntled whisper. It goes straight through her though.

She doesn't say anything for a few seconds, just sits stationary, and even if I can't see her, I feel her stare.

Then quietly, reluctantly, like she's scared to say the words out loud in case they come true, she says. "I was scared."

Scared? The angry part of my brain is sniggering now. Give me a break.

"What were you scared of?"

"You."

The angry part is cut off as the other part, the part that's Thirteen's soulfinder before everything else, squirms in anguish.

"At first, right at the beginning, I was just scared you were going to hurt me. Then later…I thought you'd hate me for not telling you and…" her voice tails off a little bit, and if I didn't know better I'd say she was crying.

"I was scared you'd just leave."

More than anything now, I need to touch her. Because being pissed at someone only really works if you want to be pissed at them, and I don't, I really desperately do not want to be angry at Thirteen. I want her smiling, I want her happy. When she's happy, I'm happy, I'm happy with her. Surely that's all that matters.

"I'm not going anywhere Thirteen."

There's the tiniest sliver of light starting to come in through the window, and as Thirteen moves slightly, it bounces off her eyes. They're hard and wary, filled with all the things she never wanted to have to confess to out loud.

"No offence Vick, but I've heard that one before."

I shake my head. "Not from me, and I mean it."

She opens her mouth to protest, to say something Thirteen-like, to start an argument just because she likes to argue and she likes to be right, but this time it's not funny, this time what I have to say is actually more important.

"I think you're my soulfinder."

She shuts her eyes. That's it. She doesn't cry or laugh or shout at me. She just closes her eyes. Then -, "You should be so pissed at me right now."

I grimace, I'm not going to lie to her. "I am. A little bit anyway."

"Good."

"Good?"

Thirteen stands up, so now her whole face is lit up. It's confused and complicated and intensely furious. But I don't think it's furious at me.

"I've been trying to work out for days now, why it feels like this. Why everything feels perfect with you and just shit when you're gone. And I couldn't do it, I couldn't work it out. And I've been tearing myself apart trying to, and as I've been doing it, I've been lying to you at the same time. Yeah, you should be pissed at me."

She's an idiot, an absolute idiot. But as I look up at her, all I can think of, is that she's my idiot. As far as I'm concerned, she's a perfect idiot.

"Where are you going?" I ask, as she turns towards the door.

She shrugs. "I figured you'd want me to go now," she says it like it hurts her, like just leaving is causing her more pain than she can stand.

"Thirteen. When I said I'm not going anywhere, it was kind of meant to imply that you're not supposed to either."

Damn. I even find her stunning when she's confused.

She opens her mouth to argue again, but I'm done talking. I've said all I wanted.

I was pissed. Extremely pissed. Truth be told, I still am a little bit. But Thirteen's said her bit, and it made sense. And she's my soulfinder. I let the word wash over me for a second, _soulfinder_.

It's perfection, hope, safety, it's…nothing I've ever felt before. Tentatively, I let my thoughts slip towards Thirteen, let the feeling spread to her mind as well.

One look at her tells me she feels it just the same way I do. A smile settles over her face and she meets my gaze with an awestruck expression.

"Come here," I say, and without a word, without even looking like she wants to argue, she does.

I want to sit up, to give her a hug, but even as I try pain stabs through my stomach, so massive, so intense that I crash back down. Thirteen makes to move away, to give me some space, but I shake my head.

I reach out to her, wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her down on top of me. She places her hands on the back of my neck and rests her head on top of my chest. I inhale, breathing in the smell of her shampoo and the faint remnants of perfume still lingering on her hoodie. Suddenly nothing else matters anymore.

I've found her. I've found my soulfinder.

**So, I too think I'm done talking for the night, instead, how about you guys take a turn. Shoot me a review and tell me how you felt about this chapter? **


	11. Welcome Home

**So..I err… haven't been the greatest at updating recently… I've been I don't know – listening to the new Mumford and Sons album, reading, watching heroes, riding the pony – all really important time-consuming stuff like that.**

**Yeah, yeah ok…I've been lazy. Really lazy. But the new chapters out now so that's something right? And because I've got some seriously dark stuff planned for coming chapters, I tried to keep this one really light-hearted. Not a whole load happens but I hope y'all will enjoy it anyway : )**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Finding Sky or the Benedicts or even Mr Joe, Joss Stirling does. But you'll never gues what? Turns out she lives around the corner from me! Who thinks I need to do some major stalking?**

**(This chapter is for fearless0601, for being my amazing bestie, but it's really for all of you for sticking with me for so long)**

**Chapter Eleven**

**Welcome Home **

**Thirteen**

_(But I will hold, as long as you like, just promise me we'll be alright)_

"I want to know everything about you."

I look down at Vick and raise my eyebrows at him. "I don't think you do."

Everything's an awful lot. So many secrets, so many lies. So many different stories I've made up over the years. So many parts of me I can't even begin to understand. How can I express all those things in a sentence? How can Vick ever understand?

Quickly, reflexively –as if it's some kind of instinct he's developed over the course of a few days, he reaches out for my hand and wraps it up in one of his. Without even meaning to, I relax, just for a second. This is how it should be, how _we_ should be. As long as we're together what could possibly happen?

Vick fixes me with his huge brown eyes, locking me up in his stare. I couldn't move even if I wanted to. It's probably a good thing that I really, really don't.

"Thirteen, whatever you tell me, it won't change anything, I promise," he says slowly, carefully. I know his voice is meant to sound reassuring but it doesn't feel that way right now.

His words only send flutters of guilt running through my stomach – because I love Vick, I do, more than I thought I was capable of loving anything let alone anyone– but still I know, even before I know what it is I will tell him, that it won't be everything. Because there is a huge chunk of everything about me that Vick is not going to want to hear.

Some things are better left unsaid.

"Ok," Vick announces suddenly, eyes twinkling with what I think is his version of mischief. "What -," he proclaims dramatically, and all of a sudden his happy expression turns to stone. Fear, cold and bitter crawls sickeningly down my spine. My mind is filled with one thought and one thought only. _'Oh God he knows, he knows, he know, he knows.' _

He knows I'm lying to him, knows there's something I'm hiding. As he opens his mouth to finish his sentence, I dig the nails of my free hand into my leg, wishing I was anywhere but here.

"What -," Vick repeats, eyes boring into mine. "Is your favorite ice cream flavor?"

My eyes bulge wide as my brain starts to spasm with shock. "What the hell Vick," I finally manage to sputter. "What's up with all the dramatics?"

He grins lopsidedly and shrugs in a way I didn't think Vick was capable of. "Personally I think it says a lot about a person."

I raise my eyebrows at him. "What? You can tell everything about me from my favorite ice-cream flavor?"

Vick shakes his head. "No...I'll need to know more than that, you know – favorite movie, favorite song, favorite color…that kind of stuff."

I stare at him for a second, feeling my face crease into a frown as I try desperately to fathom the workings of his mind. Eventually I gather my thoughts enough to ask – "Why?"

"Because," Vick says, reaching out with his free hand to run his fingertips along the line of my cheekbones.

"I love you so much, enough to be absolutely certain that there is no-one else in the world I would rather be with for every second of every day – but I have absolutely no idea who you are. All the little things that make you Thirteen – they're completely uncertain to me, and it shouldn't be that way, it shouldn't."

I close my eyes. I think I stopped believing you could ever really be loved by someone who wasn't biologically related to you when I was about ten. But right now, with Vick inches away from me with his huge brown eyes and lopsided smile and pathetic little ponytail – I'm not sure. I take a deep breath and think of nothing but his hand in mine, his fingers across my face, the warmth in the pit of my stomach whenever I look at him. I throw eleven years of cynicism out the window.

"Mint chocolate," I say quietly. "My favorite ice-cream is mint chocolate."

Vick rubs one thumb over my knuckles and nods. "Favorite color?"

"Red."

Vick smirks and wraps one hand around some of my hair. "Predictable. OK, favorite movie?"

"Gone with the wind."

"Favorite song?"

"Big yellow taxi."

Vick shrugs. "Never heard of it."

"Not my fault you have appalling taste in music,"

Vick feigns a shocked expression. "Rude."

I grin back at him. "What are you going to do about it?"

He snakes one arm around my waist, pulling me out of my chair, down on top of him. His eyes are twinkling again, filled with that mischief that I still can't believe him capable of. I like this new side of Vick.

"Oh I don't know," he whispers, the faintest trace of a laugh tingeing his voice. "I'll think of something."

He kisses me hard, harder than he ever has before. All of a sudden everything disappears. There's no guilt or worry, not even the relief. All there is is me and Vick; his hands on my back, my fingers in his hair. Happiness hits me like I've run straight into it, all of a sudden I'm laughing, grinning like a maniac in between Vick's kisses.

"Er-excuse me," intrudes an awkward-sounding voice from the direction of the door.

Vick rolls his eyes. '_Is it just me',_ he thinks in my direction, his question reverberating through my skull as if he'd said it out loud. _'Or does someone always walk in on us the minute we do anything slightly less than fully appropriate?'_

'_It's not just you,'_ I reply as I pull myself into a vaguely more dignified sitting position.

The man standing by the door is fairly tall and broad-shouldered, with wide dark eyes and cappuccino colored skin. He's wearing the dark blue jacket of the Denver police department and I can't quite decide whether to be looking at his face or the gun that I know is hanging from the belt, despite all his efforts to hide it from me.

In the end, I go for the gun. If he attacks me, knowing how good-looking or otherwise he is isn't going to help much.

The stranger doesn't so much as look at me as he pulls something from the rucksack on his shoulder and throws it in Vicks general direction. "Get dressed," he says coarsely. "You're leaving."

"No he's not," I say before I can stop myself. I eye up the new arrival, trying to work out who he is to be ordering my soulfinder around. Apprehension flits across my skin, fleeting, barely there, but enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I don't know who he is, or what he wants, but I know one thing for certain – Vick is not being taken away from me. Not again.

The stranger fixes me with a cool stare. "Oh he isn't is he?" he asks coolly. "And why's that?"

I narrow my eyes at him, swinging myself off the bed as I do so. "He's still recovering from having a bullet removed from his abdomen and an exit wound stitched up in his chest. The doctors say he's looking at a minimum of four more days before they even think about releasing him. That's why not."

The stranger shakes my reply off like it's nothing. "We'll deal with that when we get him home." He glares down at Vick. "Come on, let's get going already."

"Ok so clearly you're suffering from some kind of mental illness caused by a severe brain cell deficiency so I'll explain this in small words that even you can understand. Victor. Is not. Going. With you," I force the words out through gritted teeth, trying to put all the anger, hostility, determination and irritation in my body into one look.

The stranger scowls, indignation flashing across his face. "Listen lady,"

"No you listen," I snap back before he can finish his sentence.

"I'll have you know I'm a cop," he retaliates.

"You think I give a crap what you do for a living?"

"I could probably have you arrested for saying that."

"Guys!" Vicks shout lashes through the air, forcing the pair of us into silence. He surveys the stranger and I with exasperated eyes. "I don't know whether either of you have noticed but I'm perfectly capable of making my own decisions." He sits up shakily, moving with a trepidation that doesn't suit him, cautiously attempting to clamber out of bed.

He looks weak, fragile. Nerves begin tying my insides into butterfly knots. I'm the unstable one, the one who can't keep themselves together. Vick's the calm one, the cool one, the one who always knows what to do. The sudden role reversal is like being sucker punched when you really weren't expecting it; it leaves me dizzy, disoriented. Without even meaning to, I reach out for Vick's mind, my brand new security blanket.

_Vick,_ I think as gently as I can. No response. _Vick_, I try again. It's almost like calling a busy phone line, his minds too occupied with something else to talk to me right now – I'm reaching out for it but all I'm getting is silence, painfully loud, entirely inescapable.

Every iota of strength I possess, I put into forcing the words into his skull, one by one. I can see him hurting himself, slowly, ponderously trying to get to his feet. I'm not going to let him keep on at it.

'_Victor Benedict, sit down now or there'll be hell to pay if you don't.' _

Vick recoils, his head snapping around to look at me. But it's not just him who's surprised. The stranger looks like I just tried to take a shot at him.

"What the hell," he whispers hoarsely. "What. The. Hell."

"You could hear me?" I ask, feeling just about as shocked as the stranger looks. I turn to Vick. "He could hear me?" I repeat.

Vick grins nervously. "Thirteen," he says pleasantly, turning to look at me. "Meet my brother, Trace Benedict. Trace, meet Thirteen, my soulfinder."

"Brother?" I sputter.

"Soulfinder?" Trace echoes dumbly.

We both round on Vick. "You could have told me!" I snap.

"How could I when you wouldn't let me get a word in edgeways?"

"Let me get this straight," Trace interrupts. "She – Thirteen," he corrects himself with a glance in my direction. "Is your soulfinder?"

"Yes," Vick and I say simultaneously. Trace stands there, mouth opening and closing astoundedly. "You found her," he says in a small voice. "Vick you found her."

Vick meets his brother's gaze and nods. "I'm just as amazed as you are bro."

Trace runs one hand through his hair, a dazed expression on his face. He turns to me like a sleepwalker, his movements jerky, disjointed.

"I suppose I should welcome you to the family or something."

I gulp. What the hell does one do in this situation? "Hi," I say in a small voice. Vick reaches over and squeezes my hand. Trace shakes his head, still looking incredulous. "Mom's going to freak," he says eventually. "That's all of us now, apart from Will – and normally only one child in an entire family will find theirs – let alone six out of seven."

Vick chuckles. "You're probably right." Then he fixes me with another twinkly-eyed look. "You ready for a road trip Thirteen?"

I raise my eyebrows. "Where are we going?"

Vick exchanges a look with Trace. "Wrickenridge, Colorado."

**Victor **

_(You were never supposed to leave, now my heads splitting at the seams)_

By the time Trace's SUV pulls into the drive, dusk is chasing the sun from the sky, sending a shadow cascading over the mountains. I take my time with the view, trying to soak up every droplet of home that I possibly can before night hides it from me.

Next to me, I can just make out Thirteen's eyes in the darkness – amazement molding them into perfect circles. "This is your home?" she hisses, her voice hoarse with awe.

I grin over at her. "You like it?"

"I love it," she replies. "My home was, well...it wasn't quite like this."

Slowly, hazily, images drift through my mind – a house by a river, white paint peeling off of every surface, the air stale with the smell of kerosene. Thirteen's home. I shrug and squeeze her shoulder. "It's just a building," I say quietly.

But it's not. Not to me anyway. As Trace helps me clamber out of the SUV, I take in the little log cabin with its blue front door with its spectacular mountain backdrop. Home at last.

The minute we near the porch, mom bursts from inside the cabin, a ludicrous looking smile splashed over her face. "Vick!" she shrieks as she dashes towards us. "Oh sweetheart how are you? We've been so worried!" She pauses for a second. "Boys!" she shouts over her shoulder before enveloping me in one of her trademark smothering hugs.

My mother being all of five foot nothing to my six foot three, I stoop down to return her embrace, catching Thirteen's eye as I do so. She looks absent, distant somehow, and I know without even knowing why I know, that she's wishing she was in South Carolina, in _her _home giving _her _mom a hug.

I'm still watching her when my brothers pile out of the cabin one after the other, so I see the look of intense alarm that flares up in her bright blue eyes as Uriel, Will, Xavier and Yves all come darting up to us just as mom releases me from her death grip.

Alerted to her anxiety, I reach over and wrap one arm around Thirteen's shoulders, aware of every pair of eyes on me as I do so.

"And who's this?" Mom asks, her voice perfectly bright and polite to the casual listener but I hear the note of wariness simmering beneath the surface and know exactly where it's coming from. I've brought a stranger to our home, our inner sanctum, without alerting anyone. In ordinary circumstances this would be a killing offense.

Lucky for me these circumstances are anything but ordinary.

"Guys this is Thirteen," I begin, trying to keep the note of fear out of my voice. I really don't care whether they like my soulfinder or not, because she's _mine, _perfect to _me –_ anything else is just an added bonus. But I can tell that, seething underneath all her bravado and her sarcasm and her dry, dry wit – Thirteen _does_ care, desperately in fact.

"She's my soulfinder."

As one, my family falls perfectly still, expressions of disbelief plastered over their faces.

"Oh my boy," mom says softly, voice shifting and cracking with emotion. "Oh my dear, dear boy." She glances over at Thirteen, lost for words.

The silence lasts forever it seems, as Mom stares between the pair of us, trying to fathom what she can possibly say, what it's appropriate to say, to someone who's just found his perfect match after years of convincing himself it would never happen.

That is, until Xav breaks that silence with a sledgehammer. "No way," he snorts derisively. "She's way too hot for you bro."

A smile cracks through the trepidation on Thirteen's face as the rest of the family bursts into laughter. "Truth is he begged me to come along for the ride just to make him look good," she jokes, managing to keep a perfectly straight face whilst slinging her arm around my waist. Xavier nods knowingly.

"I thought as much," he jests. "How much is he paying you per hour?"

Thirteen's grin widens.

"Not nearly enough."

Xav too cracks a smile, his evil grin almost identical to Thirteen's. "Rather you than me. Welcome home by the way."

I smile softly at him, words not even beginning to cover how grateful I am to my younger brother for accepting Thirteen straight off the bat. Then I gently bend down and place a kiss on the top of her head.

"Welcome home, Thirteen," I repeat.

**So what did you think? Let me know in a review – whoever gets me to eighty gets a cookie…well you all get cookies…but the eightieth reviewer gets a GIANT! Cookie…. : ) **

**The songs I used in this chapter were Welcome Home by Radical Face which may just be the best song ever written (the chapter title plus the quote 'You were never supposed to leave, now my head's splitting at the seams.') and Ghosts that we knew by Mumford and sons which is also the best song ever written – anyone else confused or is it just me?**


	12. Sinners never sleep

**Guys, I am so sorry for the long wait! I was stuck with no power for a week, then school started again and I was fitting like…five paragraphs per day around homework and everything. But I finished it! And hopefully the fact that this chapter is slightly mammoth and almost killed me will make up for the fact that it's also very late…. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Finding Sky, Joss Stirling does. I do however, own the red-headed wonder that is Thirteen. **

**This chapter is for fearless0601, who will always be my best friend, no matter what kind of fanfiction trauma she puts me through. It's also for Complete Chocoholic, who's wanted to know since Chapter One what Thirteen's job was. Equally, to all the new reviewers who've joined the ranks since the last chapter, in particular Readinwritinlovin, whose gorgeously sweet review made the best of a very bad day : )**

**Chapter Twelve**

**Sinners Never Sleep**

**Thirteen**

_(When the hell does 'you'll get over it' begin?)_

The Benedicts are one of those families that take 'close' to a whole new level. Every look, every gesture, that in most families would mean nothing, carries a weight, a substance, a whole new purpose when you're among them. They don't have to use telepathy to know what each other are thinking. Just being around them, at the dinner table, in the living room, on the back porch with the November wind tearing at my face, I realize something I think I must have always known.

If I don't have Vick, I don't have anyone.

Now sitting in the kitchen, all attempts at small talk smothered by the intensely silent eight-way conversation taking place around me, there is only one thing I know for sure. Vick's family want to know more about this stranger in their midst - and they can't believe that he has nothing to tell them.

Leaning back in the battered leather couch I'm occupying, counting the seconds tick past for want of something better to do, I realize I _could_ just tell them everything – spill my guts out into the silence and be rid of them forever. But that's not really an option, that's never been an option.

I have committed sins in my past that will stain who I am for the rest of my life. Mistakes that didn't feel so much like mistakes when I started out, and maybe that's really what I'm scared to confess – not what I've done, but what I haven't. What I should have felt but didn't. All the ways I failed.

Simply being near the Benedicts, being in the vicinity of their closeness, their love for each other, their overall goodness, is suffocating. I've known them five hours and yet I can see that the general aura of brilliantness they give off is lightly them all up like Christmas trees. I'm left in the shadows, made insignificant by the light I can't share with them.

I don't want these people to know about me. I want them to like me, to admire me. To accept me. Angels don't tend to accept the devils among their number. They tend to cast them out and watch with curious eyes the way they splinter as soon as life catches up to them.

Despite myself, I grit my teeth. I won't break, not me. But maybe it would be easier if I would.

"What are you think Trouble?" Vick says softly, leaning so close his sound as loud as a shotgun.

I turn to peer into his huge brown eyes. "You can't tell?" I say just as softly.

"Not if you don't want me to."

_You're keeping me out._ He doesn't say it, but I can see it inscribed on his heavy eyelids, it's the sharp edge to a gaze that's trying so very hard not to be accusing. As if I needed it, more guilt adds itself to the heap that's taking up permanent residence in the pit of my stomach.

I don't want to hurt him. His brothers think he's scary, menacing even. And he is, unmistakably, undeniably. But like all the best of us, there's something else underneath. He's hurting. I can feel it like it's my own wound, like there's a hole in the middle of my heart slowly tearing me in two.

_Maybe,_ I think to myself. _He's hurting enough for the pair of us._

And in that moment I love him so much, this man who's aching inside – for the friend he lost, for the family he knows he can't keep safe forever, for the normalcy he's always wanted and can't quite manage – but still has it in him to love a desperate little girl who's so clearly nothing but trouble.

I love him so much it hurts, so much I don't know what else to do about it. So I tell the truth.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

"I don't want to hurt anymore."

**Vick**

_(I cry Babel, Babel look at me now)_

It comes to my attention right at this very second, that I have never had to make a choice before. Well…not this kind of choice anyway. My family or Thirteen.

They don't trust her, I can feel it. It's in the way Will watches her, like he can see the danger creeping closer and closer to us the longer she stays. It's in the way Trace's hands keep returning to the gun at his belt, as if he has to keep reminding himself that it's there. It's in the way my mother hasn't hugged her yet, when my mother will hug everything that moves.

_And maybe they're right, _wheedles the traitor inside my head. _She's so closed off – she won't even tell you what's wrong. Maybe there is something she's hiding. _

Or maybe she's scared. God knows I am. Since meeting Thirteen, finding out that she's my soulfinder, I've been more scared than any other time in my life.

It's like I didn't know half of me was missing until I found it, startlingly separate from me. Now just the thought of losing my other half again is enough to send stabs of preemptive pain shooting through my stomach. I can't, I _won't_ let anything get between me and Thirteen. I don't think I could take it.

Then she's leaning towards me, eyes bright and keen and so, so beautiful. They drill holes in my doubts, breaking down any barriers I still had. I can tell myself as many times as I like that I probably shouldn't trust Thirteen, but it won't make a difference. I love her too much to care.

"I don't want to hurt anymore," she whispers. I don't know what's going on behind those bright blue eyes, and I won't ask. If she hasn't let me in her head, she doesn't want me there. But there's hurt in her voice, mixed with fear and worry and a hundred other things I love her too much to want her to feel.

Aware of the gazes of every member of my family fixed directly on me, aware that each and every one of them thinks I've completely lost my mind, I make a choice.

I'm done questioning myself, I'm done with second-guessing and doubting and wondering whether I'm on the right track. _Screw it,_ I think to myself. _Screw the whole frickin world. _

I'm in love with a girl. That girl loves me back. Anything else is just irrelevant.

With one finger I trace the line of Thirteen's face –from her eyes to her cheekbones down to her jaw. _I don't want to hurt anymore, _she said.

"So don't," I shrug. I lean forward and kiss her.

I choose Thirteen.

**Thirteen**

_(In a burst of light that blinded every angel)_

Though he would like everyone else to think otherwise, of all his brothers, Vick is most like Xavier. Trace is too brash and loud but then again, Uriel is too quiet. Will is too laid back and complacent but Yves's complex ramblings are too intensely intellectual for even Vick's mind to untangle. No, of all his family members, Vick is definitely most like Xav.

Which is probably why I like him so much.

Standing side by side, you would only be able to guess they were brothers by the fierce familial resemblance – if they didn't look alike, you wouldn't even think they were friends, let alone family.

Xav scampers across the driveway like an over-eager puppy, getting sidetracked every few seconds by something shinier or more vivid than what he was originally doing. Every inch of his persona – from his hideously messy hair to his oddly pristine timberlands – is careless and abrasively messy, screaming 'I'm here' to the world, just in case no one had noticed the six foot three guy with the God complex.

But just like his older brother, there is another layer underneath. A guy who looks at everything and really _sees _it. Just like Vick, Xav is more than he seems.

"Where are we going?" I ask Vick. The evening sky is clear, the sun setting the whole sky on fire. The world seems so much simpler outside than it does inside. The tangle of guilt and nerves is still knotted through my stomach but out here, everything seems farther away, distant somehow.

Once I'm out of the silence, once I no longer have to think about what's happening, I can be happy once more. Or maybe that's just because Vick's arm is around my waist.

Vick chooses his words carefully, turning each one over in his mouth before uttering it. "We're going to go do something that'll cheer you up," he declares eventually.

I wonder if he knows he's perfect.

"Thank you," I say softly, though I'm not quite sure for what. For getting me away from the rest of his family as quickly as he could, for loving me even though they obviously don't…the list is endless. All that really matters is that he smiles and says 'you're welcome' and kisses the top of my head. It makes me feel like the most important girl in the world.

Xav grins. "You two are too cute," he drawls, catching my eye as he does so.

How did I get here? I am not the kind of girl who gets her guy and lives happily ever after. But here I am, and here he is. _Maybe I've got this wrong maybe I'm not so hopeless after all. _

Vick raises his eyebrows at his brother. "You have been looking after it haven't you Xav?"

Xav widens his eyes innocently. "But of course, I can't believe you'd suggest otherwise!" His voice is filled with a mock horror so believable I almost fall for it. Almost being the operative word.

Vick's face remains impassive, inscrutable. "Because you don't have a track record or _anything_ do you Xav?"

His little brother turns to me. "For the record, I have no idea what he's talking about."

"Little known fact about Vick is that he's actually a compulsive liar," I say wryly. Only once the words are out of my mouth do I realize how ironic that sounds coming from me.

Vick pulls a face. "Come on loser," he sighs, towing me over to the other side of the driveway. When I see where we're headed, I almost drown in my own laughter.

Sandwiched between Trace's gleaming black SUV and Saul's remarkably less flashy truck, is an old-style Harley Davidson bike that Vick looks at as if it's his firstborn.

"No way," I sputter. "_No way, _is that yours!"

"It's my regret to inform you, unlucky Thirteen, that it is , in fact, his," Xav says solemnly, passing Vick the keys. "Well actually since he went away it's mine but out of the goodness of my heart, I'm letting you guys borrow it."

"Wow, letting me borrow something that's already mine, you're just too generous Xav," Vick rolls his eyes at his kid brother. To me he adds. "I thought you'd like it – it seemed like a kind of Thirteen thing."

I take in the bike, and can't help but smile. Trust Vick to notice my love of anything old that goes fast. "It's definitely a Thirteen thing."

"You gonna be ok?" For the briefest of seconds, Xav's façade drops, replaced by the most serious of expressions as he glances up at his older brother.

"I'm fine," Vick reassures him. "You've worked your magic well enough, I'm not gonna fall apart any time soon. Now get out of here," he jerks his head in the direction of the house and slowly, reluctantly, Xav leaves.

Vick swings himself onto the motorbike and without hesitating, without even stopping to think, I do the same.

"Where to Miss?" he asks, glancing over his shoulder at me. I loop my arms around his waist, resting my forehead on his back. Right now, in this moment, I could be anyone at all. Just a normal girl on a date with the guy she loves, without a care in the world. "Anywhere," I murmur into his shoulder. "Anywhere at all."

Vick revs the engine once, twice, then the rest of the world disappears, whizzing past us in a blur of colors and sounds. Going this fast, it feels like we're about to take off, to soar away into the sky leaving the earth behind forever. If Vick was with me, I think I could be ok with that.

Then, completely unbidden, uncalled for, the memory of the last time I was on a motorbike slips into my head. It wasn't mine, in fact I don't know whose it was, just that on that occasion I was all by myself. Running away.

Faces dance past my eyes, each of them as familiar to me as my own. I know every smile, every vacant stare. They've been haunting me for years.

Something in my brain snaps, and the images are snatched away like they never existed. A fog seeps through my brain, clouding my memories, hiding my thoughts from me. I feel like I'm wandering aimlessly through my own mind, without a compass or a map to guide me out again.

It's just like being interviewed by Callum all over again. No matter how hard I try, I just can't remember. Even though I know that I should.

I know that I'm with Vick, I know that with him, I'm safe. But the only other thing I know off the top of my head, is that I'm also very, very scared.

Something's happened. Something bad.

**Vick**

_(I would have stayed up with you all night,)_

"You need to stop," Thirteen shouts at me over the roar of the engine.

I try and look over my shoulder without crashing the bike – we're in the woods now and the trees are wrapping themselves around us, hiding us from the daylight. "Why?" I shout, managing to catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye.

"Just do it!" she snaps back. "Just pull over!"

Nerves snap down my spine. I slow the bike down but I don't stop. "Thirteen what the hell is wrong!" _Just tell me, tell me why you're scared, tell me something for the love of God. _

She gasps, takes a deep raggedy breath then says, slowly. "Haven't you ever just gotten that feeling when you know something's wrong – you know it's not quite right but you don't know why?"

"I tend to leave that kind of thing to Will," I say slowly, but that's not quite true. I knew something wasn't right when I went into that house in Denver. I knew...though I don't know how I knew…that something was going to go horribly wrong.

Cass died because I ignored that feeling.

"Fine," I say. "Fine." I stop the bike, already feeling that perfect moment, that moment of me and Thirteen and everything being perfect, slipping away from me.

Slowly, carefully, Thirteen slips off of the bike. Without looking around, without saying a word, without even glancing at me, she vanishes into the forest.

I can feel my heart start to tremble in my chest as I follow her, keeping one eye on her dark red hair at all times. When she runs, I run, when she stops for breath, I stop for breath.

Maybe we climb for hours, maybe minutes, maybe only moments. I don't know and I don't know that I care either.

All I know is that all of a sudden, Thirteen screams. The noise doesn't sound natural, doesn't sound _human._ Fear surges up from the pit of my stomach and starts choking me, smothering me. I don't even realize I've started running till I'm next to Thirteen, wrapping my arms around her, pressing her face into my chest.

There's a girl lying in the forest, floating in a sea of blood. The knife wounds in her chest leer up at me, a gaping hole in what mere moments before must have been a life. The girls hair is red, and for a second we're not in Wrickenridge, but on a deserted road in a thunderstorm. And it's not this girl lying there, but Thirteen. My heart hurts so much I think it's going to split open, my head's about to disintegrate from the force of all the thoughts raging inside it.

"I'm calling the others," I whisper hoarsely and I can feel Thirteen nod weakly against my chest.

'_You know I love you, right?' _her voice slips it's way into the mess my thoughts are making of my brain.

'_Yes,'_ I think back. _'Of course.' _ It's about the only thing I know for sure.

'_Just remember that,' _she replies. No matter how hard I try, she won't tell me what she means.

**Thirteen **

_(I really fucked it up this time, didn't I my dear?)_

"I'm taking you back to the house," the voice is soft but forceful, it expects to be obeyed completely and entirely. It doesn't surprise me when I turn to see it belongs to Saul Benedict.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can still see Vick and Trace pacing up and down, each on their respective mobiles. Catching my glance, Vick tries a smile, but it's empty and hollow on his worried face. He looks so empty, so tired. I hate myself for doing that to him.

Looking back at Saul, I nod, following him to his beat-up Chevy that makes me ache with longing for my own truck whenever I see it. There doesn't seem much point in fighting with his order. Not right now anyway.

He holds the truck door open for me in a way that reminds me so forcefully of his son, I almost want to smile, helping me into the cab reflexively, like he's not even thinking about it.

They're polite, the Benedicts, unfailingly so. Up until now, I'd thought it was just good manners, but I find myself wondering if in fact, it's something more than that. The whole thing - their arriving in a convoy of cars, immediately checking to make sure I was alright before even thinking of doing anything else – it could all just be included under being polite, but it feels like a front, a façade.

A disguise for the fact that they serve the Savant Net before anything else.

So when Saul next speaks, it doesn't surprise me that he still manages to remain courteous, even when he must know the words are filling me with dread.

"I think it's time for you to tell us the truth, don't you?"

The truth? The truth is that as my memory begins to flicker back to life again, I basically drown in self-loathing.

The truth is that when my mom died, I needed money and fast. And it turns out some people pay an awful lot for the services of a girl who can find anybody in the world, no matter how far away they are.

The truth is that when he first offered me the job, I thought it was his girlfriend or his sister or maybe his kid, that he was looking for. I thought he was like all the others.

The truth is that, in my naivety, I thought nothing of it when he came to me with job after job after job. I just needed the money, I didn't think about the man it came from at all. And when I turned on the news and saw all those faces, all the girls that I'd found for him, limp and lifeless and long dead, I didn't do the right thing, I didn't tell anyone. I ran. I told myself I'd finish this one last job, and I ran.

I might not have taken the knife in my own hands and ripped those girls in two, but I as good as killed them. I opened the door and let the monster into their lives. I destroyed them.

I turn and look up at Saul, into those deep brown eyes that aren't nearly as intent as Vicks are but still manage to look just like his do. I look up at the father and see the son, see the man I love, and I lie straight to his face.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Saul sighs, and for a second is transformed into an old, old man who's seen far too much of the world already. With weary fingers he pulls something out of his pocket and passes it to me.

"Then explain this."

As slowly as a man walking to face the firing squad, I unfold the note.

You can't hide from me,

Thirteen.

**Well…what did peeps think? Was it ok? Because I started off feeling really proud of it and now I'm not so sure. Let me know in a review? Please? : ) **

**Also thank you to everyone who does review…I really kind of love you guys, it means so much 3 **

**Right the songs are this chapter are: Long gone and moved on by the Script (when the hell does you'll get over it begin?), Babel by Mumford and Sons (I cry Babel, Babel look at me now), Iridescent by Linkin Park (in a burst of light that blinded every angel), How to Save a Life by the Fray (And I would have stayed up with you all night) and Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons (I really fucked it up this time, didn't I my dear?)**


	13. Exit Wounds (You're in my veins)

**Right. So first off I need to apologize massively to all of you for the huge wait since the last chapter. All I can say is that there was a good reason for it, and that I wasn't just being hugely lazy. One reason for the wait was that this chapter was supposed to have a majorly sad ending – like seriously, I was building up to it, I had it all planned out in my head…it was one of the first scenes that came to me when I planned this story… But I couldn't do it. Not to Vick and Thirteen and not to you guys either. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Finding Sky or anything related, Thirteen however, in all her disfunctionality is mine. **

**This chapter is for all of you who have supported me through Thirteen chapters of this monster of a story – by reviewing, following, favoriting, PM-ing me…you are all incredibly people and I am so grateful for you. And 106 reviews? You people are just out of this world, never in a million years did I think I could achieve that. I hope this chapter is worthy of you all. Thank you.**

**Chapter Thirteen**

**Exit wounds**

**(you're in my veins)**

**Thirteen**

_(What if I wanted to fight – beg for the rest of my life?)_

"You do know that if we wanted to, we could find out the truth for ourselves right?" Saul asks slowly, softly, deceptively sweetly as we pull up to the house. I lean my head against the back of my seat and take a long, slow breath. The last time I was here I was about to go for a ride with my soulfinder, about to have a magical, magical moment.

_How did this happen to us? _

I know that I should not underestimate them, that I shouldn't let my guard down for even a second but the Benedict's are _good _people. At least my Benedict is anyway. So I take a risk.

"Yeah," I agree, the effort of using my voice rubbing my throat raw. All of a sudden tiredness is prickling behind my eyeballs, swarming into my brain – just keeping my eyelids propped up is almost more than I can stand. "But you won't."

Saul puts the truck in park and looks across at me, dark eyes searching my face like he'll find the solution to all his problems written there. "Believe it or not Thirteen, the last thing we want to do is hurt you."

I don't believe it. In my experience that's what you tell people to make them trust you, to make them fall for the lies when they drip out of your mouth. And maybe I'm overly suspicious, maybe I'm paranoid but then again…maybe I'm right. Because when I look up, Uriel Benedict is standing by the front door. The worst of the brothers, the one who sees the past, the one who doesn't need me to even talk to him to know everything about me. Everything I've done.

They say they don't want to hurt me but they're threatening me all the same; watching me, waiting for me to slip up. My eyes flicker from Saul to Uriel back and forth, back and forth more times than I can count. I'm not safe here. Not without Vick.

_This is no more than you deserve, no more than what you've earned. _

I brought this upon myself; I as good as got down on my knees and begged for it to happen. I rub the back of my hand over my eyes, wishing that I could just wipe the fear, the fatigue, the regret straight from my brain.

If only we could wash our mistakes away so easily, if only we could stitch up our flaws like exit wounds. Too bad my past seems more like a cancer than a bullet hole – leeching the life out of me drop my drop, giving the world plenty of time to watch me bleed.

"What do you want from me?" I whisper. Honestly…I don't know who I'm talking to anymore. Saul, Uriel, God…it doesn't make a difference anymore. I am constantly being screwed over by people who have more control over my life than I do. I really never stood a chance.

Saul sighs. "I want to help you, Thirteen, if you'll let me."

I close my eyes. Vick wants to help me. He wants to take all the pain, all the heartbreak straight out of my soul. The problem is he really thinks he can do it too. And every time he tries, every time he even attempts to fix me and it fails, it hurts him. Just looking at me hurts him because he knows that I'm not happy, that I'm keeping something from him and he can't work out what the hell it is.

"No Saul. Trust me you really don't."

I slide out of the car and slam the door behind me. Just screw it, screw all of it.

"What's going on?" Uriel calls to his father. One step behind me, Saul takes a deep breath. I can't see him but I can practically feel the thoughts flying off him, radiating from him. All of it, everything – whether I stay free to live within my lie or get strapped to a chair till I tell them everything – depends on what kind of man Saul Benedict is.

"Nothing you need to worry about Uri."

"You kidding me?" Uriel stares down at his father, eyes wide, the disbelief splashed over his face almost a carbon copy of what I'm feeling – it bubbles up inside my stomach, threatens to overflow me. It's not happiness, not even close. But the novelty of having a good surprise is almost the same thing.

It's a totally new feeling; almost as fresh, almost as curious as falling in love. No matter what happens, I promise myself, I will treasure the look on Uriel's face forever. Sometimes one small victory, no matter how pathetic it is, can seem like a landslide when you spend your life specializing in failures.

I meet Uriel's glare with a smile, walking straight past him as if I don't have a care in the world. Saul's not going to do anything to me – sure he still doesn't trust me but he's not going to hurt me, not going to make me spill the secrets I'm saving for the grave. It's not much but it's more than what I had.

Looking past me at his father, Uriel jerks his head towards the house. "Zed's back from town Dad, he brought Sky with him too."

Zed Benedict. The youngest brother. The one everyone but Vick seems to absolutely adore. _Well this should be fun._

I push open the door and freeze. At least…that's what it feels like. The whole world stops still - nothing moves, nothing stirs. Everything in the universe holds its breath.

All of a sudden fate makes a sick kind of sense.

Once upon a time, not really all that long ago, I sat in a pickup truck looking for a blonde haired girl whose name I didn't know.

And now I've found her. Small, skinny, half-hiding behind her massive soulfinder, Sky Bright looks one bad day away from snapping in two. I barely even look at her, don't even meet her wide-eyed stare but I _know._ With every fiber of my being, every bone, every hair, every drop of blood, I know.

This is the girl he wanted me to find.

And I know something else too, something that makes my heart drop from my chest to the pit of my stomach, something that sends little trickles of revulsion flooding through my blood, turns my insides to ash.

He followed me here. He found me – he always finds me. And I've led him straight to the girl he wanted me to look for.

He's going to try and kill her. Sky. He's going to kill Sky.

_What the hell have I done? _

**Vick**

_(you're in my veins and I can not get you out)_

The thing about families is that in reality they are a deeply implausible concept. Think about it; a whole load of people you _have _to love without them earning it, deserving it, even needing it. The problem with families is that it doesn't matter what they do to you; you have to love them anyway.

And I do, I do love my family. But I love Thirteen more. I love her enough not to care about what she isn't telling me, enough not to give a shit that my mother, father, brothers – my whole bloody family - don't think she can be trusted.

Enough to really, really _hate_ them, all of them, for not wanting her, not accepting her.

Dead eyes, emotionless gazes, pointless conversations made just to fill the emptiness. As Trace drives Yves, Xav, Will and I back to the house, we're fighting a silent war. They're all searching for the words to tell me, right here, right now, while we're alone – that they think I should be careful, that I should be less trusting.

I'm searching for the words to tell them that if I get any less trusting, I'll be living alone, in an igloo, in Alaska. Searching for the words to say that I'm not sure I even trust them anymore, my own brothers.

It never used to be this hard. There's this feeling in the pit of my stomach, this twisting, writhing mess of confusion that just won't leave me alone. I don't know what to think anymore.

The dead girls face is burned into the backs of my eyelids, her wide glassy eyes – eyes that are so much like Thirteen's it makes me want to vomit– stare at me from the shadows. What I need is something to take my mind off all that, something to ease my brain back into normalcy, into peacefulness. All I'm getting is a quietness that's sending my thoughts into overdrive.

It only gets worse once we're inside the house. The silence only increases, only intensifies the longer I spend with my brothers. It stretches between us all, taut, volatile. Any second now it'll break and God knows what will become of us.

They tell me Thirteen's in my room; that she felt tired, or stressed, or needed some alone time. I get a different version of what's wrong with her from every family member. Somehow I doubt any of them are actually true.

I need her. I need her sarcasm and her anger and her ruthless, ruthless vitality. I need the energy that flows off of her no matter where she is or what she's doing. I need her right now; to wake me up, to make me feel alive again.

I need her so much I don't even bother knocking on my bedroom door, just barge straight in.

She's sitting on the bed – hair bunched back in a messy ponytail, face washed out, strained, exhausted – halfway through changing her shirt.

Immediately; before I can backtrack, before I can stop myself, heat rushes straight to my face and I blush red. All Thirteen does is smile her crooked little half-smile at my embarrassment – but there's something not right about it, something sad and lonely and a little bit wistful.

No matter what has happened to her, no matter what state she's been in, Thirteen's always seemed so…strong; so tough, so unbreakable. Like she knew no matter how much shit went down she'd come out the other side just fine.

Now she's falling apart. Breaking into a million pieces right before my eyes.

"What's up Trouble?" I ask; my gaze locked on her face. Maybe if I just will it there a smile will appear to illuminate it, to wipe away the hollow look in her eyes. Maybe if I wish hard enough, the old Thirteen will come back, the vivacious Thirteen, the one who could light up a whole room just by being in it.

She gestures to her stomach - to the huge lumps of scar tissue marking the place she was slashed open, the entry points of a knife that was trying to hurt, to kill, to tear apart the soul concealed under the skin. They crawl across her chest, up under her bra, down to the waistband of her filthy blue-grey Levi's.

"I can't stop staring at them," she says softly, mournfully. Just voicing her thoughts seems to be costing her more energy than she can possibly give up right now.

"Maybe," she continues. "If they weren't there it would be…easier somehow. To forget, to...move on. I don't know, maybe if I didn't have to look at it every day it would be like it never happened."

"It did happen." The words are out of my mouth before it even crosses my mind that it might not be the wisest thing to say, before I've even considered that it's not what she needs to hear.

"It did happen Thirteen, you can't change that, you just have to…deal with it. It happened. Move on." Who knows where the words came from or how they sprung into my mind but I know instantly that they need to be spoken, that they need to get out there, into the open.

Once upon a time, I would've said that honesty mattered to me. There was a period of my life, not so long ago, when bravery was everything and integrity was king. No more. Now, all that matters is me and Thirteen. All I need is for her to be happy, safe, content. As long as she's ok, I'm ok.

But we've got to get out of this. This sea of pain, of regret, of secrecy that's swallowing us whole, drowning us, smothering everything that we are – we've got to escape from it. I won't let everything that we are die. I can't.

Crossing the room, I kneel down in front of her, look straight into her dark blue eyes. I open my mouth and then close it again. There aren't words to say any of this or if there are, I don't know them. Words don't have enough meaning, enough thought, enough _life. _Words don't have hearts or feelings or minds – you can twist them and shape them however you like and they will never be perfect, they will never quite cover all the things you feel.

So instead, I don't say anything. I just stare at her, lose myself in her. If there was anything that I could give to make her life perfect, I would do it a million times – no matter what the cost.

All of a sudden, Thirteen takes a deep, raggedy breath. It shakes her whole body, shudders through her skeleton. For a second she sits there gasping, gulping at the air as if she never thought she'd get another chance. Then she kisses me.

It's one of those long kisses, one of those dark kisses. One of those that fills your whole body up until you can't feel anything, can't think anything, can't remember _anything _except the kiss. It's one of those kisses that feels momentous – either the start of something magical or the end of something that really, desperately should have worked.

Emotions slide from her brain to mine. Pain, regret, sorrow – all of them bitter, acrid on my tongue. But overpowering them all, love sparks from her to me, across the narrow divide between our bodies.

It's like it was always meant to happen. Her hands slip under my shirt, my fingers trace patterns across her skin.

She moves, I move. I breathe, she breathes. And as long as I'm touching her, kissing her, holding onto her I can kid myself just for a second that we'll be ok.

I love her. She loves me. For now that's enough.

**Thirteen**

_(And with a cataclysm raining down, insides crying save me now)_

I listen to the sounds of Vick falling asleep, hating myself every time his breath rustles against my skin. With my head on his chest I can feel his heart pumping; so fragile, so vulnerable.

_Shit, I love him too much. _

If I could stay here, in this moment, for the rest of my life – I would. I would lie wrapped up in Vick's arms and as long as he was there I would never even think about moving ever again.

Why the hell can't that be an option?

The longer I stay here, the more I'm hurting him. And not just him – his entire family. The family that was right not to trust me, not to want me anywhere near them. I've brought a monster into their midst, I've single-handedly exposed them to the worst kind of evil that there is.

He will find me. Every time I breathe, every time my heart manages to stutter out another beat I feel him, lurking in the back of my mind. I'd thought it was just fear but I know now, for sure this time, what it is.

He can control me. He played with my mind when I was talking to Callum, made me forget things, made me think I was going insane. He led me straight to the girl in the woods – _he wanted me to find her._

I don't know what it is but he's got me stuck, got me hooked. God knows what he could make me do.

If he follows me here, he'll find Sky. I can't even guess at what he'll do to her, but I know enough to know that it'll hurt. That if she survives she'll never be the same. She'll be broken, shattered, without a trace of who she once was left over.

I push myself up into a sitting position; cast one last look at Vick's sleeping face. So calm, so innocent. There's always a hardness, an anger, a watchfulness simmering beneath the surface when he's awake – a caution that never seems to cease. But now, as he sleeps, all that disappears; dissolves into oblivion.

"I love you so much," I whisper through clenched teeth. Too much. That's why I have to do this.

Slowly, cautiously, desperate not to make a sound, not to make this any harder than it already is; I slip out from underneath the sheets onto the ice-cold floor.

I pull on my Levi's, a shirt, some socks I'm almost certain are mine. Vick's jacket swamps me but I pull it on anyway. It smells like him, smells safe and warm. Wearing it's like being closer to him. Maybe it'll make me brave.

My heart starts to tremble in my chest, tears prick the back of my eyes, my insides turn to jelly. I so desperately wish I didn't have to do this. Every thought in my head, is screaming at me not to do it, to get back into bed, to stay with Vick and never leave him behind.

_I have to do this. _

Painstakingly slowly, as if by taking longer I can change what I know has to happen, I walk over to the door. With every step something inside me turns to stone.

I don't want to leave Vick. It would be easier to try breathing with no lungs. He is the order, the calm, the strength in everything I do. He is the only thing I have that makes any sense, that works at all.

I love him. But I'm killing him. Killing his family.

He is the only person I've met in a long time that hasn't tried to hurt me, that has cared for me, wanted me, _loved me._

But the people I love get hurt. Just being around me makes them crumble away into nothingness. I'm the worst kind of bad luck.

The halls of the Benedict house are quiet, tranquil. The whole family is at peace, secure in the knowledge that nothing can hurt them while they're at home. I won't be the one that changes that for them.

Words chase themselves through my brain as I slide through the front door – the cold punches me in the stomach but nothing compares to the throbbing, smarting, smothering pain in my heart. Flitting through my head as quick and fleeting as butterflies. Beautiful, iridescent. Dead before six weeks has been and gone. All the things that could have been, might have been. All the things that will be as long as everything goes to plan.

All the things that I wanted to say that I was never brave enough to hear out loud. Things that will stay trapped inside my head forever.

Unless Vick sees the little white envelope tucked under his pillow. A letter that starts with I love you and ends with I'm sorry.

A letter that explains everything. All of it.

Once he reads it, he'll hate me. But by then I'll be long gone.

**Vick**

_(Nobody is perfect, but everyone's the same)_

The first thing I see when I wake up is that Thirteen's gone. The second is the letter sticking out from under my pillow. Grabbing it with one hand I launch myself out of bed, hurtling towards the bedroom door.

Stumbling down the dark corridor, I tear open the envelope and squint down at the words inked on the page. Everything in my body turns to ice.

_It's time to come clean. To tell you all the things I've done. Don't hate me for it. I don't think I could stand that. _

Oh Thirteen… my lips form the shapes of the words as I read them off the page. Poor, poor Thirteen.

It's horrifying and twisted and in so many ways I cannot believe how pissed off I am that she didn't tell me any of it. But all of that is insignificant compared to the massive hole yawning in my chest, the huge emptiness that aches for Thirteen, for my soulfinder.

Because so much about her is flawed, she is so totally chaotic and damaged and dysfunctional. And yet she's still so very, very perfect.

Footsteps pounding in time with my heartbeats I fling open the front door. I can't lose her, I'm not ready to let go yet.

We are not perfect. We make mistakes. Sometimes they're little…sometimes they're huge. But it is not up to us to judge others for what we too are capable of. That's up to God, or fate or karma.

All we can do is love the people our hearts tell us to love with everything we have. Love them despite their imperfections.

I can just make her out. At the far end of the drive, where the trees meet the drive – a splash of bright red hair against the colorless moments before dawn.

"Thirteen!" I shout, the sound ripping through me. Everything I have is in that one word. Without it, I am empty, hollow, useless. Vick Benedict is just a name now. Without Thirteen Harrison alongside it, it will never mean anything again.

"Thirteen!" I repeat. She's just a smudge on the horizon now but I make out the shape of her as she turns around, somewhere in the back of my mind I feel her thoughts pushing up against mine.

I rip the letter in two, then four, then eight – I keep on ripping it until it's nothing but a shower of confetti.

"This doesn't change anything!" I shout.

**So what did you think? Did I do ok? Let me know in a review why don't you? : ) They mean loads to me.**

**So the songs in this particular chapter go as follows: **

**The chapter title is a combination of the song titles of two of the best songs in my life at the mo: Exit wounds by the script (the song I make anyone who says Danny can't sing listen to) and You're in my veins by Andrew Belle.**

**As far as subheadings go you've got The Kill by 30 seconds to Mars (what if I wanted to fight, beg for the rest of my life?), You're in my veins by Andrew Belle **_**again **_**(You're in my veins and I cannot get you out.) Iridescent by Linkin Park (And with a cataclysm raining down, insides crying save me now) and…yep you got it You're in my veins **_**again **_**… that song just really fits these two ok? **

**Also, if anyone's interested, the song that I listen to most whilst writing this and which kind of fits the story completely (scarily so in fact considering I discovered it **_**after **_**I started this) is Samson by Regina Spektor. Have a listen..you'll figure out why.**


	14. Bleeding Out

**Hi everyone, I am so, so, SO sorry you've had to wait so long for this…especially since I did promise someone it would be finished about two weeks ago. I just had some personal stuff I needed to deal with and I kind of decided that to do that I should take a break from fanfiction, as much as I love it, and just concentrate on my original stuff for a while. But I'm back now, I'm not going anywhere (especially since I'm currently planning an epic new fic) and I'm actually quite pleased with this chapter, I hope you all enjoy it and that you're all well : )**

**Disclaimer: I know I've been gone a long time but I STILL don't own this book series (sad face)… however Thirteen is mine, steal her and I will personally throw you to the sharks (or SunWillRise2340, whichever's quicker, she's a lot more violent than you people know!) **

**This chapter is for a few people: TheStolenPhoenix who stayed up all night and whose reviews make me smile, aniram1122 who is so good to me when it comes to reviewing , Elizabeth-Jasper, who just understood everything I was trying to get out there and Mrs Becky Salvatore, who I failed so entirely when it comes to deadlines….**

**But seriously, all you reviewers, everyone who reads this…you have no idea how special to me you are 3 **

**Chapter Fourteen**

**Bleeding Out**

**Vick **

_(I'm bleeding out, so if the last thing that I do is bring you down, I'll bleed out for you)_

Gone. It's four letters, one syllable. It's pain, and anguish and regret. It's Thirteen having left and the huge gaping hole remaining in the spaces she once filled. But it's more than that.

It's anger, and bitterness. It's the sudden need to swear, to punch something, to hurt someone because only by destroying someone else will I feel any less destroyed, any less broken.

"There was nothing else you could have done," my mother soothes. The circle of brothers on the front porch behind me nods in agreement, eyes blank, faces wiped clean of any emotion, any clue to what's going on inside. They don't want me to see the tiny bubbles of satisfaction bursting inside their brains, the waves of euphoria sweeping through them at the knowledge that they were right about Thirteen, and that even if they weren't, she's gone now so what does it matter?

They're not bad people. They're great people, wonderful people. That's what pisses me off. That people so generous, so giving in so many ways could refuse to give something as simple as trust to someone I care about, someone I trust.

_It's because they don't trust me; don't trust my judgement._

The thought comes to life unbidden, unwanted, but once it's been thought I can't just push it to the back of my mind, can't force it away. I can feel the fallacy pouring off it, even in the spiralling, twisting, raging corners of my grief-wrecked mind, and for a fleeting, feeble moment I don't give a damn.

All this time spent struggling over right and wrong, yes and no, to act or play safe – it's all been time wasted. It's all trickling away now, all useless, irrelevant.

There's nothing left but anger.

"She put us all in danger," Zed growls in the background – my careless brother, my thoughtless brother. My brave, strong, completely unbroken brother whose Bambi-eyed soulfinder is tucked in the hollow between his back and the front door; safe, happy, _here. _

I punch him. Even as I do it I can feel the wrongness, the evil, the foulness of it all. I can feel a lifetime of painstakingly taught lessons and hard-learnt morals shattering like glass. It's sickening and heart-wrenching and disturbingly, disgustingly exhilarating. The knowledge that even as I tackle him to the ground even as I feel the quavering of his heart and the clenching and unclenching of his muscles as he tries desperately to fight back, that it doesn't matter if he does stand up for himself, if he does hit me back.

The power at my fingertips – a power I promised myself I wouldn't use, not after Thirteen, not after that night we first met and her screams in the hospital room, never again after that – has never felt so close. If I wanted to, I could order Zed to punch himself, to knock himself out – to snap his own neck if I wanted to.

If I wanted to.

Do I want to?

Anger fizzes and burns inside my stomach, grief howls inside my head, anguish digging razor-sharp fingernails into my heart. I want to hurt, to destroy. I want pain, I want someone else to feel like this so I don't have to be alone.

He's my brother. My youngest brother. I'd rather be alone than lose that, lose him.

I don't want this.

I scramble up, hands trembling, vision blurring and unblurring – the tears I'm not going to let myself cry gathering in front of my eyes.

I can't stand their faces, can't stand that they're not angry, not scared. Can't stand that they want to help me, want to save me. They can't, no-one can.

I turn on my heel and almost run to the car, whipping my phone from my jeans as I go. I won't destroy my family. I won't let them watch me falling apart, won't let my pain tear them in two.

But I'll still have blood, I'll still have revenge.

"Garcia," I say as the call connects and the sound of my own voice startles me. It sounds calm, clear, strong. It sounds like it knows what it wants, knows what it's doing. Clearly nobody's told it that not even I have the faintest clue.

I take a deep breath, and even as her voice starts to fill up my ear, I block it out, filter it away. I'm done listening, and in truth I'm done talking to. Words failed, words shrivelled life up and cackled as it died. Action's the only option left.

"We've got a serial killer to catch."

Beneath my shirt, I feel my bullet-wounds burn.

**Thirteen **

_(Traded my vision, for heartache and sorrow)_

After one drink, the world started looking a whole load brighter. After four it fades away again, to shadows and ashes and cigarette smoke.

My whole life has been bleached and disinfected and wiped away. Colour doesn't belong here, happiness doesn't belong here – love doesn't belong anywhere. Only confusion and hate and loneliness.

I need another drink.

"What've you lost then honey?"

She's pretty, in that obnoxiously blonde and skinny way that those of us with shit complexions and insufficient statures have been hating since the dawn of time. I think she's the bartender that served me the last four beers but I really can't tell anymore. It's all blurring into one now – thoughts and feelings and memories – all mashing into one huge lump of pity, of self-loathing, of despair.

And the thing is I don't know if I can't see straight because of the drink or the fact that every time I hear the bar door bang shut I find myself sitting up and looking for Vick, even though I know he won't follow me, even though I begged him not to, even though in some far-flung part of my heart I still think it's better if he doesn't.

"I haven't lost anything," I sigh. "Except my drink, I've definitely lost that." I gesture towards the bottle – I have always been, and will always be the worlds most obnoxious drunk.

Blonde bar-girl shakes her head at me. "Uh-uh sweetheart, I'm cuttin' you off."

I raise my eyebrows. God bless my North Carolina drawl because heaven knows I don't have it in me to sound deliberately contemptuous anymore.

"I'm not sure you can do that you know." I just want a drink. I just want to drown this all out, to smother the pain. To make it fade away into nothingness.

She smirks. "Course I can, I'm the bartender here meaning if I don't want to give you another drink until you talk to me, I don't have to."

"I. Haven't. Lost. Anything." I grind the words out through gritted teeth. "Though I'm still kind of missing how it's any of your business in the first place."

She lowers her head so our eyes are on the same level. "Because if you work in a dump like this long enough you start to recognize what the big drinkers look like. You ain't one of them. So I'm standing here watching you get trashed, all by yourself and it's obvious you don't go in for that kind of crap normally so clearly shit's gone down. And -,"

She spreads her hands, shrugs her shoulders. "What can I say, I like to help people."

Something's wrong with this picture. I feel the tingle of unease slip through my murky mind, wincing as it tries desperately to find some part of my brain still awake enough to work out what it is.

I know her, I recognize her. The name tickles on the tip of my tongue, but my brain can't grasp it, can't make out the shape of it.

"I know who you are." I hate how the alcohol's made my mind go runny, how just thinking feels like an effort. On the other hand I love it, embrace it, need it. A little oblivion is exactly what I want.

Blonde-bartender widens her eyes just a fraction. "What? A really good guesser?"

I catch the hint in her eyes, catch the meaning lurking behind them. She's trying to help me, trying not to make me feel stupid, drunk, pathetic.

"Yeah," I nod. "Of course. That's totally what I meant."

Why am I still talking? Why haven't I turned tail and run yet? In any other circumstances I would be out the door in a flash, gone the minute I thought I'd recognized someone I knew, someone who might remember me, someone who might hurt me. Why not now?

_Cos you want someone to talk to. Someone you can spill your guts to. _

"If you're such a good guesser why don't you tell me what I've lost?"

Her smirk has returned. "Father." She holds up one finger. "Sister." She holds up another. "Boyfriend." Finger number three.

Despite myself, despite every better instinct in my body, I shake my head. "Mother. Brother…" _boyfriend? _But that's not what Vick is…what he was anyway. He was more than that, he wasn't just some guy he was…_everything; _the sensible to my insane, the rational to my reckless, the dutiful to my disrespectful. My other half, my –

"Soulfinder." The word is out of my mouth before I can stop it and just saying it – just trying to wrap my tongue around the word that's not mine anymore, the word for everything I lost, everything that's missing – sends little needles of lip-biting, sob-choking agony shooting through my heart.

The look on her face says it all. It's almost gratifying really, almost pleasing to see my pain reflected on her features. She doesn't recognise the word but maybe she gets it, maybe she understands, maybe there's a reason this girl is working in some backwards bar in downtown Denver.

"It's not your fault." Her answer's quick, thoughtless, one of those textbook phrases people pull out when they don't have the words or the time or the empathy to think of something better.

_Of course it's my fault._ My thoughts throw themselves at the edges of my skull._ I screwed up, I ruined it, if I'd only _–

What? If I'd only what?

What could I have done, to save my Mom, to save Charlie. Could I have dragged them tooth and nail, blood and cursing, to get help, to fix themselves? Would anyone have been able to pluck the pain out of their skulls, the words they didn't know how to say, the anguish they had no way of expressing?

No.

I could have saved those girls though, could have stopped once I'd known what was happening, could've dredged up some bravery, some integrity. That way I wouldn't be running, wouldn't be drinking, wouldn't be missing my soulfinder with every fragment of my being. I wouldn't be feeling lost, broken, torn in two – a puzzle with half the pieces missing, a novel with every other page ripped out.

_You would have died. _I know instantly that the voice isn't mine – it's too calm, too rational, too sober, _too right. _If I'd tried to run, tried to escape the job, he'd have come after me. And he would've done the job properly, I wouldn't have lived to meet Vick, to be with him, to be loved by him.

If I had to lose him a thousand times just to meet him once, I would do it. It's as obvious as thinking, as breathing. We don't question why the trees change colour or the sun sets and rises or the seconds tick past. We just take it for granted. That's what love is, real love anyway. It's not to be questioned, it's not to be picked apart. It's just something to be done.

Love and life have an awful lot in common anyway.

"It wasn't my fault," I whisper to myself. "It wasn't my _fault._"

God reaches down and lifts the weights off of my shoulders. It all seems lighter now, easier. I realize with a start that the sky outside the bar is a crisp, bright, flawless blue – not the vacant expressionless grey I remembered from before. And slowly, cautiously, I let emotions flood back into my head – lost emotions, forgotten emotions, emotions I blocked out years ago.

Perspective, forgiveness, faithfulness – _hope; _it's all coming back to me now.

Because for years now I've been barely living with myself, my head and my heart two separate entities, uneasy within my skin. Broken, damaged, shattered, useless – that's all I've ever been as far as I'm concerned.

But it wasn't my fault.

And with time, and superglue and enough effort, what's shattered can be fixed, broken wings can fly again and uneasy hearts can love. I'm proof of the last one if nothing else.

It wasn't my fault.

In my excitement I stand up – I'm getting the hell out of this place, running as fast as I can, as far as I can – I'm going to fix myself, I'm going to forgive myself, I'm going to _live._ But it's all too much, too fast, my thoughts may have sped up but the alcohol's still seeping through my veins like poison and I feel my knees buckle underneath me, my back spasms and I'm slipping away, falling down, down, down.

"Do you want me to call someone?" the bartender asks from a long, long way away.

With one shaking hand, I scrabble in my pocket and slap a calling card down on the counter.

Then swirling blackness and nothing but peace and oblivion. Finally, thankfully.

**Vick**

_(X & Y)_

A map. Red dots where victims were found, girls ripped apart and lives torn to tatters. Reclining in my old desk-chair, with my back to Cass's desk and my eyes on my work I can feel the old me flooding back in. Calm, authoritative, responsible, efficient.

Thirteen had a way of erasing the parts of myself that I've never liked, the parts I've lost all hope of fixing. Something about her, her recklessness, her tenacity – her _Thirteen-ness_ – smothered them all, suffocated them. Now I feel them knocking on my mind again, begging to come back in.

I let them.

Maybe I can pretend that I'm the old Vick, that none of this ever happened, that this is just another case, another killer. That he hasn't taken half of my life with him.

"I don't get it," my eyes have burnt holes in the paper, I've pored over it and scrutinised it and stared at it from every angle. Still nothing. "What links this guy with these places– Colorado, Arkansas, Maine, Florida, Illinois, Arizona – why did he go there, they're nowhere near each other, they've got nothing in common…just what was he thinking?"

Callum shrugs. "They're just the places he was in at the time I guess."

"No way," I like the certainty in my voice, the sincerity. I like that I sound like I know what I'm talking about, what I want, what I mean.

"No he planned those killings, he targeted those girls," I tilt my eyes towards the ceiling hoping for inspiration, a revelation. "I just wish I knew why."

"You can't." His voice is cold, brisk, calculated. Indifferent.

The anger's not gone. I may have hidden it under the coldness, the briskness, the impassive façade of Old Vick, but it's still there, burning, seething.

"Callum," for a moment I don't care that he's my superior, that he outranks me, that I owe him everything. "I will find this guy if it kills me."

"If it kills you?" Callum jerks to his feet, and the world slows down. It's like someone's taken his face, taken his voice, and transplanted them onto a different person, a different Callum. At the flick of a switch he's transformed, morphed, mutated. His lips draw back in a sickening, stomach-churning, sadistic twist of a smile – those are stones in those sockets, not eyes.

I'm looking up at my boss, at a man I've trusted, respected, relied on. A monster's looking back.

"Even if it kills you Victor?" he repeats. "If it breaks you and crushes you and rips you in two, like all those little girls you're so worried about?"

All I can think – all that registers, all that computes – is that he's between me and the door, blocking any exit, any escape. His words come from a thousand miles away, I don't hear them, don't recognise them, they just wash over me.

It's not fear I'm feeling, just acceptance. Like I've been expecting this, like I'd seen it coming even though I didn't, even though never in a thousand years would my thoughts have strayed this way.

"Because that's what love will do to you Victor," Callum rasps. "It'll mangle you and butcher you then stand over your cold, dead body while you bleed out, drop by drop by drop. Trust me, I know."

I don't know that. I would've sworn that I knew what love is long before Thirteen, would've sworn that I'd felt it, mastered it, acclimatised to it. I was wrong.

Real love doesn't hurt – it doesn't keep you up at night, doesn't play with you or belittle you or pretend it knows everything that you are. It's just…_there,_ all the time, with every breath, every thought, every moment.

Loving Thirteen didn't feel like an effort, I didn't feel like I was having to fight for it or struggle with it. I just knew, with every inch of my body, every aspect of myself, that I loved her. And that was enough.

"You're wrong." I look straight at Callum, daring myself not to look away, to meet that stare, to glare through the madness, through the malice. There must be something underneath all that, some hint of Callum, some trace.

There isn't.

He shrugs.

"Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm not. I suppose we'll just have to see."

And once again I find myself staring down a bullet.

**Thirteen **

_(Stop every clock, the stars are in shock)_

My head spins, my heart hammers in my chest. Black dots like butterflies chase themselves across my vision. But I'm alive, so very, very alive. The euphoria's not gone, the happiness still fizzes away inside of my stomach.

_It's not my fault, it's not my fault._

"Are you ok?" he's some friend of the bartenders I guess. Sweet, skinny, attractive I suppose except he's not tall or tanned or possessing a ludicrous looking pony-tail so I could never find it in myself to love him. He leans against one wall of the bar's kitchen, glancing down at where I lie on a moth-eaten couch and there's real sympathy in his eyes, real kindness.

I don't think I'd have noticed that before, or trusted it if I had.

From behind him, the blonde bartender clears her throat. She doesn't look at the guy, doesn't even catch his eyes, just stares straight past him at me, inquisitive, enquiring.

"Someone's here to pick you up," she barks across at me.

Despite my head, despite the hangover, despite everything I sit bolt upright, heart summersaulting in my chest. "My boyfriend?" I gasp.

I didn't expect him to come, didn't expect him to want to see me. Just the thought of his voice, his eyes, his arms around me is enough to wipe the pain from my body, to ease it out of my muscles, my bones, like it never existed.

But she shakes her head. "Nope. Apparently he was busy, his boss is here instead."

_His boss? _

The guy raises his eyebrows. "You sure that's a good idea?"

"It's fine."

_Shit._

All of a sudden, through my disappointment, through the sinking of my heart and the despondency flooding through my veins, I join the dots, I finish the puzzle, I realize why I know the girls face.

Garcia.

Which means –

"You ready to get going Thirteen?" Callum sticks his head down the door and smiles down at me.

That smile could stop hurricanes in their tracks, kill giants stone-dead, make a shark weep and cry for his mama.

And it tells me everything I have to know, everything I didn't want to know.

I will go with Callum. I will pretend that there's nothing wrong and do whatever he tells me to do.

I don't have a choice.

**Well…was it ok? What did you guys think? How about letting me know in a review!**

**Right…so this chapters song lyrics go as follows **

**Both the chapter title and the first subheading are from Bleeding out by Imagine Dragons whose album I am DYING to buy : ) **

**Next up is Sky's still blue by Andrew Belle, an absolutely amazing song and a new favourite of mine (Traded my vision for heartache and sorrow), after that is actually the title of the Coldplay song X & Y which makes a lot more sense in context if you know the song and last up is Tears of an Angel by RyanDan which is a song I tend not to listen to not because it's bad (it's stunning) but because it's flawlessly perfect and makes me cry every time : )**


	15. High hopes

**Well…err...hi guys. It's sure been a while hasn't it? Look, I am really truly sorry about the lack of updates – horrifically embarrassing lack of updates I should say. I'm not going to lie to you or make up some nifty excuse, I'm just going to tell you the truth and say that in about February I had a sort of nervous breakdown which not even my very close friends really knew about. I basically became extremely insecure and really didn't think I was worth anything at all and stopped writing entirely because I didn't see myself as being good at it at all – some of you may have noticed I deleted my other story The Habit because I felt like I'd ruined it. The good news is I'm completely fine now, I'm writing again and loving it and have some very exciting stuff coming along, both original and fanfiction. The reason I decided to tell you guys the truth is that part of my recovery process was sped up by reading the truly wonderful reviews you've all sent me and I wanted you to know how much I really do appreciate it. So I guess this chapter is dedicated to you all, every single one of you amazing people who've got this silly little story to 142 reviews. You're fantastic, every single one of you.**

**This is unfortunately the second to last chapter of dear old Lucky Thirteen, therefore I wanted to ask you all a question about following fics. I can't quite decide which I want to write next – a sort of multi-Benedict story covering all seven brothers in detail, all with their separate storylines being part of like, a bigger story arc (this would involve Vick and 13 a lot though more Vickabelle's POV than 13's) – or a straight sequel to Lucky Thirteen. I'm completely open to both though you should know that if I do write the first story that doesn't mean I won't write a sequel to this at all.**

**Right…so that was the overly long authors note…please enjoy the very overdue chapter fifteen!**

**Disclaimer: There is sadly a difference between owning something and just adoring it. If I owned this book series, Thirteen and Vick would be endgame, there would be more shirtlessness involving Vickabelle, Traceabelle and Xavabelle and the Benedict brothers wouldn't have a creepy fixation with English chicks (not that I'm complaining being half English!)**

**Chapter Fifteen **

**High Hopes**

**Thirteen**

_(Your albatross, shoot it down, shoot it down)_

When I was little, I used to dream about hopping on a bus and getting the hell out of North Carolina. I always imagined myself in New York or Washington, up north in Maine or way out west in Seattle – as far away from the dry heat and the choking sun and the endless stillness of the South.

Sometimes I even caught that bus. It stopped on the freeway just next to our house every day at two-o'clock. If I cut school I could make it, I could press my nose up against the grimy window and watch the world go by, dream about life without the constant, crushing, total pressure of my mom, of Charlie, of the pain that never seemed to stop twisting itself around in my gut. The emptiness.

That's how I feel now, staring out of the window of Callum's black sedan, watching the world go by. Trapped. Isolated. Neither here nor there; caught in the in-between – not safe at home with Vick but not alone either. Not Thirteen who was pulled out of a station wagon broken and obliterated and soaked in her own blood – the selfish Thirteen, the scared Thirteen, the reckless Thirteen – but not the sheltered, protected, all wrapped up and comfortable in love Thirteen either.

I don't know what I feel. There's no fear flickering in the pit of my stomach, not hatred burning me or alive or regret fizzing like acid through my veins. I'm going to die – I can see it, feel it, taste it on my tongue and in the back of my throat. Callum's going to kill me, he's going to tear me in two. And all I feel is nothing.

"Where are we going?" I ask, my voice a rasp, a croak – barely there, almost inaudible underneath the car engine and the roaring of the freeway and the truly disgusting noise of some mainstream boyband oozing from the radio.

I ask because I'm done not knowing, because I'm sick of being life's punching bag, it's scapegoat. If I'm going to die, at least I'm going to look death in the face this time.

Callum smirks. Except not really. I've seen smirks before – on dumb boys in bars who think they're cooler than the world because they've worked out how to get wasted and still look sober, on preppy looking girls in coffee-shops who assume because you've got a drawl and an inability to pronounce vowel sounds that you must be white trash – Hell, all seven Benedict brothers, Victor included, seem incapable of looking at anyone with anything but a smirk. A smirk is condescension in a facial expression – a perfect example if ever there was one of pure arrogance, sarcasm, ironic egoism.

Callum's look is the one the puppet master has as he pulls the world's strings, making humanity dance to the music in his head. It's the look the firing squad has before it fires, the executioners shrug before he decapitates you. It says, quite plainly, that he knows what's going to happen next, that you could never work it out, that he isn't to be defeated. That he could break you and shatter you and toss you aside and nobody will ever know about it.

"Oh," he shrugs as he signals to pull off the freeway. "It's a cute little place, I think you'll like it – about forty-five minutes from the city." He nods towards a road-sign as we turn past it and all of a sudden I understand his sardonicism, how he managed to turn a simple facial expression as darkly sadistic as he did. There's only one place signposted anywhere near Denver the route we're headed.

Wrickenridge.

It must show on my face – the horror that seeps into my blood, the panic, the nausea, the defeat. Something must freeze in my eyes or harden my skin because Callum raises an eyebrow in some kind of sick amusement.

"You know this really shouldn't surprise you at all Thirteen, you're a clever girl after all."

The words squeeze themselves through my numb lips, somehow escaping from the trap of my mouth even though I don't remember trying to speak them, don't even remember thinking them.

"I thought you were going to kill me."

"I am going to kill you."

Just for that one second, I think I could hate him. I think I can feel the hate boiling up in my stomach, think I could imagine feeling something other than empty just for the briefest flash of an instant. Hate him for how he can encompass it all – my life, my existence, twenty-one years of being, my beginning, my end – in five words, flatten it, blunt it, dull it. Like it doesn't matter. Like the fact that I'll die, be extinguished, cease to exist is mundane to him, unimportant – like I'll go out like a light bulb; silently, imperceptibly, nothing more than an annoyance. I could hate him so easily.

Why don't I?

Maybe there's a limit to how much one person can hate, maybe I've reached that limit. Maybe I'm all used up, dried away, vacant.

Or maybe I've loved a little bit too much to ever hate again. Maybe the fact that I can still think of Vick and smile – even if the thought of his face, his eyes, his smile breaks my heart because they're something I won't ever get back – has filled up something inside me. Maybe I'm not empty but full. Maybe just the fact that if I try I can still remember his fingertips on my skin, his mouth on mine, being all tangled up in him with no idea which way was up and which way was down – maybe that's made me happier, brighter, more forgiving even if I haven't noticed the difference myself. Maybe hate's a habit you have to keep up whereas love comes so simply, so effortlessly, so easily it's like you aren't even trying.

Callum's still talking – has he not noticed he's holding a dialogue with himself or is he just too insane to care?

"Oh I'm most definitely going to kill you, I just need a little favour first."

Sky. He needs Sky. Needs me to find her so he can kill her, so he can rip her into pieces just like hundreds of other girls. Just like me.

"No."

All I can think of, all I can see – is Vick. My soulfinder. Losing him would be like having my chest smashed open, like having my intestines pulled out. I would be crushed, snapped, destroyed. Lost. Just thinking about it is like suffocating, like being throttled – all the breath bleeds out of my lungs, something in my heart slowly turns to ice, turns to lead. I couldn't live like that, I realise – and realising it is like finding a light-switch after years spent fumbling in the dark; you don't realise how obvious the solution is until it's staring you in the face. Without love we're all just empty, vacuous, barely breathing, scarcely alive. Without our soulfinders we are nothing. I can imagine it so easily – losing Vick, trying to live without him – wasting my life in a state of mourning, blank and unfeeling and all dressed up in black until the day I died.

Zed and Sky are even younger than I am – sixteen or seventeen? I don't know, I never even asked. Younger than me with lives ahead of them. Lives they haven't ruined yet; unbroken, untainted. Innocent. To take Sky from Zed would be like cutting his hands off and telling him to paint a masterpiece –like amputating him at the knees and telling him to climb a mountain or severing his tongue and ordering him to deliver a soliloquy – it would burn him out, blind him, waste him away. One bright, flickering, incandescent teenaged boy would be blown away, smothered, locked up in his own uselessness because he would never be able to do anything again, be anything again, feel anything again without his soulfinder, without his other half.

I won't be the one to do that to him. Not now, not anymore. It doesn't matter how much I like or dislike Zed or his girlfriend or any of that. I won't tear them in two, not this time. Not now I know what it's like to need someone more than you need to breathe, for someone else's life to be so infinitely more important than your own.

Finally, slowly, begrudgingly, something begins to flood into my hollow brain – my heart and stomach and veins begin to fill with something more than emptiness and vacancy.

It's not love. Not hate. Not even fear.

"No," I say again, determined to sound more sure than I feel – brave, certain, confident. "I won't help you."

It's defiance.

And then there's a screaming sound as the car bursts into flames.

**Vick **

**Two hours previously **

_(Summer has come and passed, the innocent can never last)_

'_And once again I find myself staring down the barrel of a gun' _

When we were in the FBI training academy, the second rule we ever learnt was that every single idiot can be brave until he's two seconds away from a bullet in the brain. I think the first was something about trusting and obeying our superiors with our lives but that ship's sort of sailed away by now.

And yet, I don't feel scared. My hands aren't shaking and my knees aren't trembling and even though I can just imagine what it's going to be like to die– a quick flash, a sudden blinding, excruciating explosion of pain in my forehead then nothing – all I feel is sad, sorrowful, alone.

I miss her. Thirteen. And even though I want – with every inch of my being, every ounce of my soul – for her to be far away from here, to be safe, some traitorous conniving part of my heart wishes she was here to hold my hand before I die. I want to look at her – just once, just one more time. It doesn't matter that the image of her is superimposed over my eyeballs, that I could pick her out of a crowd without looking, that I know every inch of her, know her off by heart – I want the real thing, want her here, with me. Just one more time.

"Go on Vick," Callum says slowly, maliciously. "Say something. Get angry. You're hardly the nice, placid, easy-going type are you my man? Tell me you knew it was me all along, that you were just waiting for me to slip up."

I didn't. I didn't know. I couldn't even have guessed. I spend my entire life looking for criminals hiding under rocks, creeping around in the shadows that I completely forgot to even glance at the people right in front of me.

There's something sickening in the pit of my stomach. A thought. An idea. Something I swore to myself a long time ago – years and years and years – I would never do. It claws at my insides, throwing itself against my bones, shakes me to the core.

When I was about sixteen, I swore I'd never use my powers again, that I'd deny everything that made me a Savant. I swore it because the way I found out I could make a person do whatever I wanted was when I told my high school calculus teacher to go die in a hole. They found his body six weeks later and it took the combined efforts of an FBI team and my parents to work out who it was.

I didn't use it again until I was twenty-one, until I met a red-haired girl with terrified eyes who tried to claw herself to pieces one night in a hospital room. And that time was worse than the teacher, worse than anything I'd ever done in my life. Because she was already fragile, already broken and I took what shouldn't have been mine to take and I snapped it in two.

I will not be a monster. I won't let myself break other people in two, take away their free will, their choice, their right to do whatever the hell they want. I simply refuse.

And yet the idea keeps on coming, keeps on growing.

_I don't have to die; don't have to leave. There's still time._

No. I can't. I can feel the hope growing in my stomach – one speck of light in what would otherwise be total darkness – but I smother it, choke it, drown it out. If I go, I go. I won't let the fear of my last moments on earth turn me into something I'm not – something I promised myself I wouldn't be.

"Come on Victor," Callum snarls again. He's enjoying this – it's splashed over his face, tattooed across his skin. He loves this, thrives on it – needs it like he needs oxygen. It's fear flowing through his veins, not blood – malice that makes every synapse fire, sadism coating every bone in his body.

"I killed your best friend,"

I glance over at Cas's desk. There it is, just a little pinprick of anger, the rage and the sorrow waking up inside my stomach again, calling for blood.

"I almost killed you."

That's certainly true. There are exit wounds all across my chest, tiny little mementos of a life that almost wasn't, a death that I so narrowly escaped.

"I'll kill your soulfinder."

The rage is like a flood, like a hurricane, like a tornado – unpredictable, unforeseen, devastating. For one second, just one second, I don't care about my humanity, don't care about the promises I made – to myself, to God, to anybody.

I want to kill him.

"Put the gun down Callum."

He wanted me to say something. I said something. Except it's more than just speaking. The words reverberate through my skeleton, ricocheting around my brain. The power's like a poison, like a drug. I can do whatever I want with it.

I only want one thing.

"Put. The gun. Down." In my mind I imagine him doing it, imagine the gun falling to the ground, imagine Callum falling after it. It could be over, it could all be over.

Callum's eyes widen, pupils dilating, veins snapping red from the sea of white around his irises. For a second, his mask slips, the malice flickers and I can see disbelief in his eyes – astonishment, anger.

His hand slips down a fraction so the gun's pointing at my shoulder, not my head.

"A little bit more Cal."

I hate the sound of my own voice, hate the way I can see him moving before the thought even crosses his mind. I hate myself.

But I love Thirteen. Right now she's more important than me, or my family, or Callum or anybody at all. If she's safe, that's all that matters, if this will save her life, it must be worth doing. That's what loving someone's all about.

The gun points to the ground. I watch in slow motion as Callum's fingers loosen one by one until he's holding it with just his trigger-finger. I wait for it to fall.

It doesn't.

"Vick what the hell's going on?"

Xav. He stands behind Callum, framed in the doorway, bending his head ever so slightly so he can fit through. My favourite little brother, the one who never took me too seriously, the one who was never as scared of me as he should have been.

The spell's broken, Callum's mask snaps back and he raises the gun. But not at my head - at Xav's.

"Let me go Benedict or the kid dies."

For the briefest of seconds I really don't care. He's not Thirteen, he's just my brother. I have seven of those, who cares if I lose one. I've never had anything to be selfish with before but Thirteen is mine, _mine,_ and Callum would take her away from me, destroy her, murder her. Surely nothing else matters.

Except that this is a kid Trace and I built a tree-house for because he shared a room with two of his brothers and he wanted to go somewhere he could be alone. This is the kid who gave up his dream – his one dream – without a word of complaint, not a snap or a snarl or a moan and yet cried himself to sleep every night for a month because he'd lost the one thing he was really, truly good at.

This is Xav and he's the second most important person in my life. The only one who gave Thirteen a shot – who gives everyone a shot.

If possible, I hate myself even more than before.

"Get out," I snarl. "Leave."

Callum runs, stuffing the gun into his pocket. A wry part of my brain, a part that must have been infected by Thirteen before she left finds itself hoping against hope that he forgot to switch the safety on.

Xav just stands there. Stands and stares at me and I wish more than anything that I could meet his gaze. Maybe one day I'll live down what I just thought, maybe one day I'll be able to do penance for being wiling to trade his life for my soulfinder's. Not today though. Today there's no time – no time for apologies, no time for regrets.

"How'd you find me Xav?" I turn my back on him as I ask, heaving open a desk drawer and immersing myself in its contents. Callum's not the only one with a gun.

Even if I can't see him I can hear the lopsided grin in Xav's voice. "It wasn't exactly hard Vick. All you ever do is work and sleep and it's not like you have any friends. Trace went to your apartment, I came here."

"Why?" I don't ask to find out the answer but to get rid of the guilt the silence brings, the hollow empty feeling in my chest.

Xav puts one hand on my shoulder. "You're family Vick," he says softly. "We take care of our own. Now for the love of God tell me what's going on."

Family. Thirteen. Maybe I could have both, maybe I don't have to give one up. Maybe, yet somehow I doubt it.

All the same it's worth a shot.

"Call dad." I say. "Call Trace, call Will, call Zed – and Yves, call him too."

I can feel a plan building in my brain, a risky plan, an only halfway there plan. It's the best I can do at short notice.

"Tell them that I'm going to end this. I'm going to find Thirteen and kill Callum and they'll probably agree that it's better if I don't try and do it alone."

"And how exactly will you find her?"

For a second I just love my brother. Love him for not trying to stop me, for not telling me I'm an idiot.

For finally asking me a question I can answer.

There are lines that aren't supposed to be crossed. Lines between people, between their bodies and their brains and their thoughts. I have never, ever crossed that line with Thirteen because enough people have screwed around in her brain as it is. But I can, I know I can. I can feel her thoughts pressing up against mine – tentative, cautious but most definitely there. She's my soulfinder, we're…connected, two halves of the same hole. I'll find her. I'll find her if it kills me.

"Oh you're going to hate me for this Thirteen," I whisper to myself.

Today seems like a day for hating. For hating and breaking all your own rules.

**Thirteen **

**Two hours later **

_(And as the world comes to an end, I'll be there to hold your hand)_

The fire obliterates everything; the grey country road through the windows of the sedan, the pale blue sky far up above, the hazy smudge of the Rockies on every horizon. It consumes it, obliterates it, devours it.

"Fuck them," Callum swears and I wish for his smirk back, wish for the disgustingly sadistic, all-knowing, omnipotent look to return. Anything's better than the look he's wearing now, the twisted, cracked, shattering mask of a madman pushed too far. "Fuck all the Benedicts."

Benedicts? What the hell is he talking about?

_My little brother Yves is the one to watch,_ Vick had whispered to me on the drive to Wrickenridge with Trace. _He's just a little bit more explosive than he looks._

But of course. Fires don't just happen – don't just materialize from nowhere. And if Yves' is here –

"Vick," I whisper. Just for a second it's like he's in the drivers seat next to me, like he's holding my hand. Hope flickers like a candle inside my stomach. He's here, he's actually here, he came for me.

Callum grabs the back of my shirt. "Move," he snarls as he kicks open the driver's door. "They won't touch me if I've got you and don't think for a second that I'll let them stop me."

I lash out with one foot as he tries to drag me from the car. I don't care about the smoke billowing in – choking, suffocating, blinding me. I won't go with him, won't let him take me – not now, not when I'm this close. I kick and scratch and writhe in his grip but he's bigger than I am, bigger and stronger and FBI trained.

"Vick!" I scream. Please come, please, please, please. I have never in my life needed or wanted saving but right now, in this moment, I do not want to have to fight by myself for one second more.

I want Vick. I want my soulfinder.

Black spots dance in front of my vision like butterflies as sunlight streams into my hung-over eyes. Callum pushes me down onto the road beside the car and for a second all I can see, all I can think, all I can process is sticky, sun-baked tarmac and the stench of smoke in my nostrils.

Silence.

Then he's there, right beside me. I feel him before I see him, warm hands on my back, reaching underneath my armpits, lifting me to my feet. Squinting through the sunlight, through the hangover and the pain I see his eyes – black and inscrutable as ever.

Vick. I'd imagined this moment. Imagined it over and over again, torturing myself with the idea that I might get him back, that I might get to keep him. My Vick, my soulfinder. Not once had I believed it would actually happen.

I'd imagined it all wrong. I'd imagined being flooded with joy, with happiness, with relief. All I feel, looking up at him, is complete. Happy, yes. Relieved too. But mostly I just feel safe, warm, whole. Like I've come home.

So many questions leap to my tongue, begging to be asked – to be answered – but Vick beats me to it, asking the first question, the most simple, the most important.

"Are you ok?" he whispers.

Right now, next to him, leaning my head against his chest as he steadies me with one hand, there is only one answer I could possibly give.

"I'm fine. But what about you?"

He smiles tightly. I see shadows under his eyes, lines in his skin that weren't there when I last saw him I'm sure. Guilt pierces through my skin for a second – I did that to him, I hurt him, this is my fault – but as if he can hear what I'm thinking he puts his head close to my ear.

"I missed you."

It's all I needed to hear. All I wanted to hear. Enough to fill the hole in my stomach, to smother any doubt, any pain – he's here and I'm here and as long as we're together we can fix this, I just have to keep believing that.

But it's not over. Turning my eyes away from Vick's for the first time I see the rest of the men standing around us. Trace has a gun like the one Vick's holding in his spare hand, as do Saul and Will. Yves and Zed are unarmed but then again I suppose neither of them need to be – Yves' is explosive and Zed looks like you could run him over with a freight train and he'd emerge the other side looking as dangerous and hateful as ever.

They're all staring at Callum, crouched less than a yard away from me and Vick, a gun in his own hand and that same teetering, shattering, slipping look on his face before.

Trace clears his throat. "Callum Bauer, I'm placing you under arrest for kidnapping and attempted murder as well as eleven more suspected murders. You have the right to remain silent, you –,"

"You think that's it?" Callum snarls up at Trace, his legs coiled underneath him like any second he'll hurl himself at the Benedict brother and tear out his throat with his bare hands. "You think that a little smoke and some shiny guns are all it takes to beat me? After all this time?"

"It's done," Trace says shortly. "We caught you."

"Thirteen caught you," Vick corrects. Both his brothers and I glance at him but not for a second do his eyes leave Callum's face.

"Why'd you do it Cal?" he says softly, and I can feel it – his hurt, his betrayal, his raging, writhing confusion – pulsing from his skin to mine. Callum was his boss, I suppose. Vick trusted him. And he murdered his best friend – _he tried to murder Vick, murder me._

All Callum does is sneer. "What? You think this is some action movie? You think I'm just going to reveal my entire plan from start to finish? Because I have a newsflash for you Agent Benedict – you're not the hero in this story, you were never the hero."

Vick shakes his head. "Nope. But there's got to be a reason all the villains confess in the end hasn't there? Maybe they just get lonely, maybe it all builds up inside. Maybe they have to let the secret out."

He wants answers. And not just from Callum, from me too. I remember the feeling of the secret festering inside me – I always will, I can't help it, can't shake it, can't forget it no matter how hard I try.

If he wants Callum to break down and beg for mercy, then he's disappointed. But if he expected him to sneer and stick his middle finger up at the world then he's disappointed in that as well.

"You know exactly why," Callum whispers. And it's not sadness in his voice, not remorse and definitely not repentance, but maybe a shade of shame, a fraction of regret.

Then he raises his gun-hand and fires straight at Vick – faster than Trace can move, faster than Zed can tackle him, faster than I can even think or react or scream.

For one second, everything stops. All I can think of is that if it's a choice between Vick and myself I will choose Vick every time. I will give him his shot to be safe, happy, healthy, to move on from me. At least he can go back from what he's done, what he's become. There's still some hope for him.

No matter what I tell myself, what I believe, what happiness I might have found, a part of this – a huge part – is still my fault. All my fault.

Then I turn and push Vick out of the way, ignoring his scream or Callum's screeching, breathless laughter or the sound of Trace swearing spectacularly loudly. Everything speeds up after that – too fast, too rapid, too quick even for me.

It doesn't hurt. Being stabbed, being ripped in two – that hurt. That was slow and torturous and excruciating. This is nothing. Maybe it's because the bullet pierces the gap between my ribcage and my hip-bone so quickly I barely realise what's happening until I'm crumpling, until I'm face down on the tarmac once more and no matter how hard I press my fingers over the bullet wound, the blood keeps on coming and coming and coming.

Or maybe it's just because I'm not alone, maybe it's because this time I'm not running away from life, I'm running towards it – holding onto it with both hands even if it's not my life I'm holding onto.

Maybe it's because the last thing I hear before everything goes suddenly, frighteningly quiet is the slam of a body hitting the concrete behind me as Vick's bullet buries itself in Callum's forehead.

**Well…err..what did you think? Was it ok? Let me know in a review? Y'all know how much I appreciate them. And I promise I won't let you go this long waiting for another chapter again…as in…I've already written the first three pages of chapter sixteen (still can't believe it's almost over)**

**Well the songs for this week…. The chapter title (I've got high hopes) is from High Hopes by Kodaline, a fantastic Irish band I can't believe I only just discovered. **

**Then it's Weight of Living part 1 by Bastille (your albatross, shoot it down, shoot it down) which is an incredibly beautiful song and I promise the lyric makes far more sense if you listen to the song. After that it's Wake me up when September ends by Green day, which I'll be minorly sad if nobody recognized as it's one of my all time favourites and also actually relatively well known (summer has come and passed the innocent can never last). And finally we have King and Lionheart by of Monsters and Men who I was tipped off about by lilyofthedarkvalley in like…October and have rapidly become by favourite band (After Mumford and the Script of course). **


	16. Samson

**Well ok guys…this is it I guess. The final chapter. You should probably know just for fun that I've never finished a story before in my life – original or fanfic – so..this is like a moment for me…I may cry. All I can say really is that you guys have been fabulous, you really have. Everyone who's reviewed this little story or followed or favourited it – you are wonderful, fantastic, amazing people and I just adore all of you. So thank you, thank you very much. Just know that writing this story is one of my favourite things I've ever done and definitely a pretty big achievement in my opinion : )**

**Also, if anyone's interested, my next story will be the one about all the Benedict's and it will be called Superman. I'm thinking it'll probably be up by the end of next week so hopefully you'll check that out (though obviously don't if you don't want to, don't feel obliged to read my writing!) and I will be writing a sequel to Lucky Thirteen though I'm not even going to think about it until after my birthday (aka end of April). **

**And the chapter title of this story is a bit of a clue…I can think of one person who might get it but I'd be interested to know if the rest of you do so feel free to review with what you think it means : )**

**Disclaimer: I've spent sixteen chapters telling y'all that I don't own this thing…hopefully you've got that by now : )**

**This chapter is for all of you…I would list every single one of you but I'm not entirely sure anyone would want to read it.**

**Chapter Sixteen**

**Samson**

**Thirteen**

_(And we couldn't bring the columns down, we couldn't destroy a single one)_

I don't know where I am. Don't know who I am. My head is full of fog; swirling and twisting and spinning around, blinding me, suffocating me. Up is down and down is up and I want to open my eyes to look around me but every time I try something snaps inside my head and I'm falling – down, down, down, down. It feels like years before I start clawing my way up again.

All I know – all I can remember, the only thought in my head that makes any sense whatsoever – is that I'm not dead. I should be, but I'm not. And I have no idea why.

I can feel my heart flickering inside my chest; struggling, straining, toiling to keep on beating, keep on hammering. It wants so badly to keep me alive, to keep the machine that is my body from shattering and breaking apart, piece by indispensable piece. And I can't understand that either. Why would anyone want to stay in this place? Stay in this dark and murky world, full of shadows and pain. If the end is coming, if rest and peace and emptiness is on its way – why is my body still at war with its mortality, still fighting to stay intact, stay alive?

I wish I could remember my name, just my name. _Everything has a name_, I think desperately to myself. A named thing has a meaning, has a purpose. Without mine I'm just a body, just a shell. I don't mind dying, but I don't want to die empty. I want to know it wasn't all just a waste.

**Vick**

_(But if you loved me, why'd you live me? Take my body, take my body)_

I will have nightmares about hospitals for the rest of my life. You would never have thought a building so full of people – doctors running up and down hallways, nurses bustling between beds, patients waiting for verdicts they're not sure they want to hear – could ever feel this totally, impossibly empty.

It's like living in a tomb.

And if this is a tomb, then I'm just a mourner – visiting the grave, trying to hold on for as long as I can. And Thirteen, Thirteen's a ghost. Her body might be in the hospital bed next to me, wrapped in a web of tubes and wires and a thousand different monitors but her mind's flown far away, somewhere I can't reach it, somewhere I can't bring it back.

I can't even feel her thoughts anymore, pressing up against mine. It's like she's already gone, like the beeping of the heart monitor, the rise and fall of her chest, is all just some hoax, some elaborate lie.

_This is all your fault,_ my thoughts whisper night and day. _This is what happens to men who're willing to give up their family, their little brothers. They lose everything they love until they're alone. Empty and alone._

This must be how Callum felt. Shattered. Broken. Ripped in two. I can feel the anger tearing at my insides, feel the hate spilling into my blood, the fury chasing my heart, forcing it to beat faster than I could imagine. He must have lost someone he loved, must have had her ripped from his side. As much as I hate myself for it, as much as I can feel just the thought of it sending waves of nausea from my head to my toes, I think I understand. I think I can just about comprehend what he did.

Because right now, I don't care about right and wrong, don't care about good and evil. I want the whole world to burn, want to tear the human race into shreds and cast them into the ashes for daring to be happy, to be healthy – to be in love – whilst the one person who means more to me than anything else is wasting away in a hospital bed, ripped apart for a second time for no better reason than she feels like she has to fix everything that's wrong with life, that everything's her fault.

And yet…I must be going insane, my soul must be sinking closer to hell with every passing minute because no matter how much I understand Callum – how completely I can relate to what he must have felt – I do not have it in me to feel sorry for him. I will never forgive and I will never forget. And I replay killing him over and over again in the back of my head, and it's the only time I feel remotely alive.

**Thirteen**

_(Don't wake me cos I'm dreaming, of angels on the moon)_

There are faces in the fog. Eyes staring through the whiteness, hands reaching out to me. A woman with thick red hair and tired-looking eyes, a tall blonde boy with scars on his wrists but a wry smile on his face.

_Mom, _my thoughts whisper. _Charlie. _

I don't know who they are, don't know how I know their names. But as the boy steps forward and wraps me in his armsI know one thing for sure, for definite.

I want to go with them.

**Vick **

_(Oh this is all for you, don't wanna hide the truth)_

I keep the bullet they pulled out of Thirteen's chest in a jar in my pocket. When we first came to Denver hospital three days previously it was on the bedside table, but Trace tried to take it with him whilst I was asleep so now it lives in my pocket, the plastic digging into my skin with every breath I take.

If Thirteen dies, this will be all I have left. The only souvenir of a life that altered mine so entirely, that burnt brighter than the sun despite everything she'd been through whilst I was content to let mine fade out, dim down, die. The only part of her I'll get to keep.

I push a stray strand of hair from her face, tangle my fingers through her girls the way I did when I first kissed her. We didn't get enough of those moments – not enough kisses, not enough time at all. I wonder how long I'll be able to remember them if she dies – how long I'll be able to feel her in my arms, fitting there perfectly, not too small, not too fragile and yet still delicate, still the most precious thing I would ever get to touch.

I wonder if all I'll be able to remember is the way she looks now – wasted, trashed, fading away. Pale as a skeleton, barely breathing, so still, so quiet. If I could keep her with me just by holding onto her hand, I would stay here forever, I would wait by her bedside until time turned me into a statue. I would never let go.

And yet no matter what I do, no matter how tightly I hold on, she's flickering and dying before my eyes – falling farther and farther away from me with every passing second.

'_She's lost a lot of blood,' _Xav had said in the car to the hospital.

'_She'll be fine,' _I'd replied. _'She's a fighter.' _

'_Then you'd better hope she's got a good enough reason to fight.'_

She's got me. She's got us. I'm her soulfinder, her other half. That's got to be enough to fight for – it's _got to be. _

I stare down at her, at the shadows under her eyes and the way her whole body shakes every time she breathes in. She's in pain. She's hurting.

It's like someone's stabbed me in the chest, like they've pierced a knife right through my heart and twisted. Because I want Thirteen to stay with me and I want to hold her and kiss her and spend every waking second with her. I want to marry her and raise kids with her and grow old and grey with her beside me. I want to get to tell her she's trouble and I want her to make fun of me every day for the rest of my life.

But I don't want her to hurt. I want her to be happy. I want her to be safe. I never wanted this.

I don't want her to die. But if trying to live is hurting her, if fighting death is just killing her faster, then I should let go. I should let her do what she has to do.

I love her too much to watch her suffer.

"Ok Trouble," I whisper. "Here's the deal." They're the first words I've spoken in days and the voice that comes out of my mouth doesn't sound like mine anymore. It sounds like the voice of a man that's been through hell and back, the voice of a man who's living in his worst nightmare. And I don't even know what I'm saying, just that I have to say it, just that I can't stay silent anymore. I need her to hear, need her to understand.

"I want you to stay with me, Ok Thirteen? I want you to stay more than you could possibly imagine, more than I even know how to explain. And if you stay, I promise I will never leave you ever again, I will stay with you for the rest of my life. And we can move back to the South if that's what you want because you're gonna hate how cold it gets in these mountains at wintertime. I'll quit my job for you because I know you think it sucks and it's what got us into this whole damn mess in the first place. I'll build a house for us to live in by a river just like the one you grew up in except I'm not leaving you like your dad did, and we can have as many kids as you want or none at all and you can name them whatever the hell you like except anything to do with the Sound of Music because I know you'll find that funny but they sure as hell won't. And we'll watch them grow up and find their soulfinders and for a while it'll seem impossible, it'll seem like they'll never make it, like they'll never find the one but we'll know it's not impossible because you found me, you found me and you changed everything."

I'm crying. I'm not sure I've actually cried since I was twelve but the tears are rolling down my cheeks and the sobs are building up inside my chest and all I want to do is scream. But not yet, not quite yet. There are things that still need saying.

"But at the same time Trouble, I know that you're hurting. And God knows you've done enough of that for one lifetime. It's not fair…for me to keep you here. Not if you don't want to stay. Don't stay because of me ok? Because I want you to stay, more than anything, you know that. But if you want to go, if it's easier for you to leave and go be in heaven with your mom and your brother then that's ok, you can do that, you can go. Don't worry about me ok? Don't worry about me because I will miss you every day for the rest of my life and there won't be a second that goes by that you won't be on my mind but that's not important ok? What happens to me just isn't important. This is about you, it's always been about you. So if you can stay, if you want to stay, then stay. Stay here with me. But if you want to go, I will let you go."

**Thirteen**

_(I'm safe, up high, you're my protection)_

I'm going. I can't stay here. Not where it's dark, where it hurts, where I'm all alone in the shadows. What is there to keep me here?

My mom reaches out her hand and I take it, lacing my fingers through hers. _Take me away,_ I whisper to her. _Take me home. _

Charlie opens his mouth to say something, to ask a question, but suddenly, out of nowhere, another voice interrupts him. A deep voice, a quiet voice, a voice from another world.

"_So if you can stay, if you want to stay, then stay. Stay here with me. But if you want to go, I will let you go." _

I recognize that voice, know it better than I know my own. My blood calls out for it, my bones and my skin and every part of my feeble, failing body scream in recognition.

It's my heart, my soul, my perfect fit. The only person in the world who could keep me from floating away.

And suddenly it doesn't seem so clear anymore. I want to go, to be free and safe and at peace. I don't want to hurt anymore, don't want to be afraid. I want to be with my mom, be with Charlie because something tells me I've been waiting for them for a long time.

'_I will let you go,' _The voice said. But I don't want him to let me go. Part of me – a part I don't recognize, don't understand –doesn't want to go anywhere without him, doesn't want to leave him behind. It screams his name, it reaches out for him. It knows, better than my failing courage and weary brain that I will never find happiness, never know peace if he's not with me.

That it doesn't matter how much life hurts, how far I fall or how many pieces it shatters me into, as long as I have him, as long as I'm his and he's mine, none of the rest of it will matter. We're two halves of the same whole, two sides of the same coin. We were made for each other, meant to be together.

And we were never supposed to be torn apart.

Peace is waiting. Peace and serenity and rest.

It's not worth it.

I open my eyes.

_(I'm coming home to breathe again, to start again)_

Vick's staring down at me. The first thing I realize, the first thing that crosses my painkiller-deadened mind is how sexy he looks when he hasn't shaved in days. The second thing I realize is how much I missed him, how scared I was without him, how every time I have to leave him.

The third thing I realise is that I've never seen Vick cry before and I would give everything I have to make him smile, to make him happy. To never let him feel sad ever again.

"Jesus Christ Vick," I croak the first words that come to mind. "You've seriously got to stop hanging around in hospitals, it's freaking creepy and so not the way to pick up girls."

He just stares at me. Stares at me like he's never seen me before, or like he thought he'd never see me again. God I love him. I love him, I love him, I love him.

Then he smiles. Just a fraction, just a hint. But it's something. It's a start. And we have a long way to go before I'm anywhere near finished.

"Why is it almost every time I see you, you end up covered in someone's blood?" he croaks.

I shrug. Moving hurts, thinking hurts, speaking hurts – just lying still and breathing _hurts _but who gives a shit? He's Vick, he's Vick and he's here and he's _mine. _He's mine and Callum's gone which means I get to keep him. I get to keep him forever and this time I'm going to do things properly.

No more hiding, no more secrets. No more brokenness.

"Don't complain, you'd be bored if I wasn't around to keep you on your toes."

He squeezes my hand. I want to reach out and touch him, to trace the lines of his face with my fingertips. I want to kiss him. And yet every time I even think about sitting up pain surges through my body, electrocuting me, burning me alive. But I have time, I have all the time in the world.

I guess I'm just a lucky girl.

**Well…that was it….was it any good? Was it worth it? Let me know in a review guys…just one last time?**

**Songs for the chapter are: **

**Well first up it's Samson by Regina Spektor (we couldn't bring the columns down, we couldn't destroy a single one). Following that it's All I want by Kodaline (if you loved me, why'd you leave me? Take my body, take my body). After that it's Angels on the moon by Thriving ivory, one of my all time fav sad songs which I fully intend on having played at my funeral..not that anyone wanted to know that (don't wake me cos I'm dreaming, of angels on the moon). After that it's Demons by Imagine dragons (oh this is all for you, don't wanna hide the truth), then Sober by P!nk which y'all probably already knew (I'm safe up high, you're my protection) and last but not least, Calls me home by Shannon Labrie (I'm coming home, to breathe again, to start again)**


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